I just entered the Bitcoin Mining lottery: NIKOLAUS

Watch Nikolaus On X here

When I first entered the Bitcoin scene in 2017, I changed my Twitter handle (now X) to “@nikcantmine”. (It was a joke I thought was funny at the time, since I didn’t have the resources to mine BTC in high school.) But today, I officially became “my CAN nik”.

The other week I received a Bitaxe, a fully open (and very small) bitcoin miner, while attending the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Summit in Nashville. It’s a pretty neat device that allows you to connect to a mining pool or solo mine.

nik CAN mine pic.twitter.com/Mv1OuTyvBM

— Nikolaus (@nikcantmine) October 8, 2024

Setting up the device was pretty easy. It was fun to play with and having the ability to hold a miner in the palm of my hand felt pretty cypherpunk. It feels like a great way to introduce someone to mining on a very small scale.

Of course by connecting this miner to a pool I wouldn’t stand to make any real profit as this miner is negligible compared to the power needed today to mine BTC profitably today. But solo mining with this machine is where things get a little interesting.

Earlier this summer, a solo Bitaxe miner beat the odds and mined a solo block, winning the 3.25 BTC block reward worth over $205,000.

Congratulations to Miner on his first bitaxe block, just a small third for finding his 290th solo block on ckpool solo! This hashrate would only find a block once every 3500 YEARS on average, or 1 chance in 1.2 MILLION per day! https://t.co/5Wtu9jydsF pic.twitter.com/D5sSzug42P

— Dr -ck (@ckpooldev) July 24, 2024

The data shows that this miner consistently mined at 500Gh/s hashrate for weeks, then increased his hashrate to 3TH just before the block was found. Which gives me some encouragement to know that my Bitaxe is currently mining at over 634Gh/s.

But I’m not getting my hopes up considering I don’t have more hashrate to add and the odds of finding a block with this low hashrate is about 1 to 1.2 million per day according to Solo Ckpool admin Dr – ck .

My solo mining stats

I got this machine for free though, so I thought why not plug it in and see what happens? I’ll deal with the power bill later when I see how much it is and reassess if it’s worth it to keep running as a fun project. After using it, I probably wouldn’t buy one based on its economy alone, since I couldn’t make my money back unless I hit the lottery. But I might buy one just to have as a fun toy.

The chances of me finding a block is 0.001% per day, but it’s honestly fun running around hoping to find a solo block. I can keep my Bitaxe running 24/7 if I want to because it only requires a 5 volt power cord plugged into a normal electrical outlet to operate. I installed it right here on my desk next to the monitor.

Chances are I will find a block based on my current hashrate

Coupled with a new Coldcard Q I just received, I couldn’t stop thinking how cool it would be to win a solo mining block with this and send that BTC reward to a brand new bitcoin wallet.

This would mean that there is no public record of me buying Bitaxe or Coldcard (other than this article) and I would have some sweet Bitcoin without KYC.

This article is a Take. The opinions expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.