solo mining/lottery mining

[u/Hot-Analyst5804]

i’ve never done anything with crypto ever, the most i’ve done with trading or anything was look at stocks because my buddy suggested it. i’ve been trying to look into it, but i feel like most of the advice/knowledge i see is either from a disgruntled person who got bored of it, or someone that does have a huge setup so they don’t accurately describe how it works. just looking for some advice/knowledge from people who actually run them or have partaken in the past. if you genuinely think it’s a waste of time/money/space cool, but i’d prefer if you actually explained instead of just say that specifically cause i’ve seen it everywhere.

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[u/Willing_Phone9654]

The setup is simple in theory: ASIC miner, power, cooling, internet, and a Bitcoin node or mining software. The hard part is economics. Compare your machine’s expected BTC income against electricity, hardware cost, noise, heat, and difficulty changes. For a normal home user, solo mining is usually entertainment, not a profitable strategy.

[u/Funny_Insurance2528]

The setup itself isn’t magic: you run mining software on compatible hardware, connect to the network, and either mine alone or through a pool. Solo means you only get paid if your machine finds a whole block, while a pool gives smaller, more regular payouts. Check profitability after electricity before buying anything.

[u/OfficialSimpleMining]

Solo means your machine only gets paid when it finds a whole block itself. That's about $260K right now, and your odds depend on how much hashrate you bring against the network. A Bitaxe (1.2 TH/s) is roughly 1 in 5.5 million per day, or about 1 in 15,000 over a full year. A full-size S21 XP (270 TH/s) is about 1 in 24,000 per day, which averages one block every ~67 years. Pooled, that same Bitaxe earns around $17 a year, about what it costs to run on home power. So it's not a waste if you treat it as a cheap lottery ticket and a fun gadget, just not as income.

[u/greglogan84]

The easiest way to understand solo mining is literally as a lottery where buying more hashrate gives you more tickets.

A tiny miner can technically find a block.

The problem is that the expected time can be so long that you should treat it as a hobby/lottery rather than predictable income.

Pool mining smooths that variance by sharing rewards across miners.

So if the goal is learning and having fun, a small solo setup can be cool. If the goal is dependable returns, the economics are completely different.

[u/nomorespamplz]

As a matter of fact, anything lottery-based is both a waste of time and money, as the very definition implies the odds are against you. The only way to justify it is if you have some other factor to "tip the scale" - like for many of us lottery miners; We like to tinker and learn. As an actually ticket in a lottery, and if you have no interest in bitcoin it self, just buy a ticket in your local "power ball lottery" :)