Home mining with Bitaxes.
Here's how it works.

What mining actually is

Mining is a lottery, and every hash is a ticket. A miner generates hashes and checks each one against a target the network sets. Most of those hashes lose. Occasionally, one wins, and the miner that drew it gets to publish the next block and claim the block reward.

More hash rate means more tickets per second. That's it. There's no skill, no secret algorithm, no edge you can earn. It's raw computation, scoring against a moving target the network adjusts every two weeks so that blocks come out roughly every ten minutes.

The reward in 2026 is 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees, paid to whoever publishes the winning block.

The hardware ladder

There are three tiers of Bitcoin mining hardware, and they are not in the same weight class.

The math

Your share of the network is your hash rate divided by total network hash rate. In early 2026, total network hash rate sits around 800+ EH/s^[1] . That's 800 million TH/s.

At 1.2 TH/s, my share of the network is 1.2 divided by 800,000,000, which is 0.0000000015 or about one-seventh of a billionth. In probability terms, each block has that chance of being my block.

Blocks come every ten minutes, so that works out to an expected one solo-mined block every ~15,000 years. That is not a typo. The answer is "not in my lifetime, probably not in my great-great-grandchildren's." That is the honest number.

Solo vs pool mining

Pool mining groups thousands of small miners together. Everyone contributes hash rate, whoever's work finds the block shares the reward proportional to contribution. You get small steady payouts every few days.

Solo mining means you point your rig at a solo endpoint (like solo.ckpool.org or public-pool.io). You are still in a "pool" for protocol reasons, but if your miner's hash finds the block, you get the entire reward. If it doesn't, you get nothing.

Expected value across infinite time is identical minus fees. Psychology is not identical. Solo is a lottery ticket with a cosmic payout. Pool is a paycheck. Home miners who choose solo usually do so because the point is not the paycheck.

Home mining reality

Heat. A Bitaxe Gamma Duo pulls about 30W. That's less than a lightbulb, but in a small room in summer, you will notice. Two or three of them stacked up and the room becomes warmer than the rest of the house.

Noise. The fans run constantly. It's a whine, not a roar, but it's not silent. Don't put one in a bedroom unless you enjoy white noise.

Realistic odds. At 1.2 TH/s on a ~800 EH/s network, expected time to a solo-mined block is on the order of centuries. In 2024 one Bitaxe did find a full block. It's like buying a Powerball ticket every week. Possible. Not planning.

Why mining matters beyond profit

Every miner adds to the network's security budget. The cost of a 51% attack scales with total hash rate, which scales with every home rig plugged in. My 1.2 TH/s is rounding error on 800 EH/s, but 100,000 Bitaxe owners are not rounding error. Geographic and ownership distribution matters.

Running a miner also means you have skin in the game at the protocol level. You're not just a holder. You're part of the machinery that validates reality for everyone else on the network.

How to start

Minimum viable mining setup, from my bench:

Go deeper

1. mempool.space, live network hash rate, mempool.space
2. Bitaxe open-source hardware project, bitaxe.org
3. solo.ckpool.org solo mining pool, solo.ckpool.org
4. Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro product specifications, shop.bitmain.com
5. Solosatoshi Bitaxe Gamma Duo product page, solosatoshi.com
6. hashrateindex.com, network hash rate reference, hashrateindex.com