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 rewardblock rewardThe brand-new Bitcoin a miner earns for adding the next batch of confirmed transactions to the public ledger. The reward is how new Bitcoin enters circulation, and it gets cut in half every four years..

More hash rateHash rateHow many hashes (guesses at the puzzle that wins a block) a miner makes per second. The network hash rate is the total across all miners: the higher it is, the harder and more expensive it would be for any attacker to overpower the network.Full definition 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 BTCBitcoin (BTC)The ticker symbol for Bitcoin, used on exchanges and in price quotes.Full definition 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 the week to September 24, 2026, total network hash rate averaged about 926 EH/s^[3] . That's 926 million TH/s.

At 1.2 TH/s, my share of the network is 1.2 divided by 926,000,000, which is about 0.0000000013 or 1.3 billionths. 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 ~14,700 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 26W. 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 ~926 EH/s network, expected time to a solo-mined block is on the order of ten thousand years. 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 926 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 part of the machinery that validates reality for everyone else on the network.

How to start

Minimum viable mining setup, from my bench:

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