A Bitcoin miner utilizing an open-source Bitaxe mining rig gained the Bitcoin lottery by mining a whole block value 6.25BTC. With one Bitcoin value roughly $64,000, the consumer earned $206,000 from their diminutive (human hand-sized) machine which was a mere $179 {hardware} funding.
Altair Expertise, one of many few sellers of the open-source ASIC Bitcoin formally endorsed by Bitaxe, shared the information on Twitter/X, congratulating the miner “who likely mined the first solo BTC block with a Bitaxe on @ckpooldev with ~500 Gh hashrate!”
🏆Congratulations to the miner who doubtless mined the primary solo BTC block with a Bitaxe on @ckpooldev with ~500 Gh hashrate! 👏Props to @skot9000, @Public_Pool_BTC & @osmu_global on the mission!You should purchase these confirmed winners right here👇🛒https://t.co/fiEPh4pRA8#WeMineBitcoin pic.twitter.com/C6D9Jj1HlRJuly 24, 2024
Bitcoin mining is a power-intensive operation, with the whole Bitcoin community having a hash energy of 552.49 exahashes per second (Eh/s) or 552,490,000,000 Gh/s. If we divide this by the Bitaxe’s 500 Gh/s efficiency, we present a dividend of 1.1 billion, which means the tiny miner solely has a 1 in 1.1 billion probability of mining a block each ten minutes. By comparability, you might have a couple of one in 300 million probability of profitable the Powerball or Mega Hundreds of thousands lottery, however the drawing doesn’t occur each ten minutes.
Bitcoin mining’s thirst for energy can be pushed up as miners should use probably the most highly effective units they will get their fingers on to have higher probabilities of profitable the mining race. In reality, it was reported that simply 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of whole U.S. energy. Moreover, a mining rig with a ton of computing energy doesn’t assure {that a} consumer will win the mining race in opposition to much less highly effective units each time, simply because the Bitaxe has confirmed.
Since miners should pay for his or her electrical energy consumption whether or not or not they get BTCs from their operations, BTC mining is usually in comparison with a lottery. You possibly can enhance your probabilities of profitable by becoming a member of a mining pool, the place the computing energy of a number of units are pooled collectively and any rewards the pool wins will then be shared amongst all of the members based mostly on their computing contributions.
Nonetheless, sub petahash units just like the Bitaxe are sometimes at an obstacle because it’s beneath the minimal payout that the majority Bitcoin mining swimming pools require. So, Altair Expertise recommends that Bitaxe mining is healthier suited to lottery mining — i.e. counting on the 1 in 1.1 billion probabilities of profitable a whole block for your self.
However earlier than you go and purchase a Bitaxe for your self, you need to know that this actually is a recreation of probability and never a typical funding. Assuming that you simply get a 1 in 1.1 billion probability of profitable one block each ten minutes, then it might doubtless take over 20,000 years so that you can get a win. Even when the ROI is 115,000% (assuming that BTC costs will stay steady over that point interval), that might equate to only over 5.75% each year — you’ll be higher off investing in an S&P 500 index fund with compounding curiosity, which at present has a long-term common of 6.87%.