When I first came onto the Bitcoin scene in 2017, I had changed my Twitter account (now X) to ‘@nikcantmine’. (It was a joke that 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 “nik CAN mine.”
Last week I received a gift Bitaxa completely open source (and very small) bitcoin miner, while attending the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Summit in Nashville. It’s a pretty nice device that allows you to connect to a mining pool or solo mine yourself.
nik CAN mine pic.twitter.com/Mv1OuTyvBM
— Nicholas (@nikcantmine) October 8, 2024
Setting up the device was quite easy. It was fun to tinker with and the ability to hold a miner in the palm of my hand felt pretty cypherpunk. It feels like a cool way to introduce someone to mining on a very small scale.
Of course, by attaching this miner to a pool, I wouldn’t be able to make any real profits, as this miner is negligible compared to the power actually needed to mine BTC profitably today. But solo mining with this machine is where things get a bit interesting.
Earlier this summer, a solo Bitaxe miner beat the odds and mined a solo block, earning the 3.25 BTC block reward that is currently worth over $205,000.
Congratulations to miner on the first bitaxe block, just a close 3rd for finding the 290th solo block on solo ckpool! That much hashrate would only find a block on average once every 3500 YEARS, or a 1 in 1.2 MILLION chance per day! https://t.co/5Wtu9jydsF pic.twitter.com/D5sSzug42P
—Dr. -ck (@ckpooldev) July 24, 2024
Facts shows that this miner had been mining 500Gh/s of hashrate consistently for weeks, then increased his hashrate to 3TH just before the block was found. Which gives me some encouragement knowing that my Bitaxe is currently mining at a speed of over 634Gh/s.
But I have no hope for it, since I don’t have more hashrate to add and the chance of finding a block with this small hashrate is about 1 in 1.2 million per day. according to to the Solo Ckpool administrator, Dr -ck.
Still, I got this machine for free, so I thought why not plug it in and see what happens? I’ll deal with the utility bill later when I see how much it is and reassess whether this is worth keeping running. After using it, I probably wouldn’t buy one based on its economics alone because I wouldn’t be able to make my money back unless I hit the lottery. But maybe I’d buy one, just as a fun toy.
The chance of me finding a block is 0.001% per day, but honestly it just feels fun to run hoping to find a solo block. I can leave my Bitaxe on 24/7 if I want because it only needs a 5-volt power cord plugged into a regular wall outlet. I have it here on my desk next to my monitor.
Along with a new Coldcard Q I just got, I couldn’t stop thinking about how cool it would be to win a solo block mining with this and have that BTC reward sent to a brand new bitcoin wallet.
This would mean that there is no public evidence that I received the Bitaxe or Coldcard (aside from this article), and I would have a nice KYC-free Bitcoin.
This article is a To take. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.