Follow Nikolaus On X Here
When I first arrived on the Bitcoin scene in 2017, I had 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 my BTC in high school.) But today, I officially became a “nik CAN mine”.
The other week I received a gift of Bitaxe, a fully open source (and very small) bitcoin miner, while attending the Human Rights Foundation’s Bitcoin Summit in Nashville. It is a neat device that allows you to connect to a mining pool or a stand-alone mine.
my nik CAN pic.twitter.com/Mv1OuTyvBM
— Nikolaus (@nikcantmine) October 8, 2024
Setting up the device was very easy. Processing it was fun and having the ability to hold a miner in the palm of my hand felt pretty cypherpunk. It sounds like a cool way to introduce someone to mining on a very small scale.
Of course, by connecting this miner to the pool, I will not be able to gain any real profit, since this miner has nothing compared to the power that is really needed today to get a BTC profit today. But solo mining with this machine is where things get interesting.
Earlier this summer, one Bitaxe miner actually beat the odds and mined a block on his own, earning a block reward of 3.25 BTC currently worth over $205,000.
Congratulations to the miner for the first bitaxe block, only the 3TH miner for getting a solo block of 290 in solo ckpool! This hashrate alone can find a block once every 3500 years on average, or 1 chance in 1.2 MILLION per day! pic.twitter.com/D5sSzug42P
– Dr. -ck (@ckpooldev) July 24, 2024
The data shows that this miner had been mining evenly with a hashrate of 500Gh/s for weeks, then increased his hashrate to 3TH before a block was found. What motivates me somewhat is knowing that my Bitaxe is currently mining over 634Gh/s.
But I’m not getting my hopes up, considering I don’t have any extra hashrate to add and the chances of getting a block with this low hash rate is about 1 in 1.2 million per day, according to Solo Ckpool’s manager, Dr – ck.
Anyway, I got this device for free, so I thought why not plug it in and see what happens? I will deal with the energy bill later when I see how much it is, and then reassess if this is worth continuing to work. After using it, I probably wouldn’t buy one based on its economics alone, since I wouldn’t be able to get my money back unless I hit the lottery. But I might buy one just for a fun toy.
The chance of me getting a block is 0.001% per day, but honestly it’s just fun to run around hoping to get a block on my own. I can keep my Bitaxe running 24/7 if I want to, as it only needs a 5-volt power cord plugged into a standard power socket to operate. I have it set up right here on my desk next to my monitor.
Along with the new Coldcard QI we just got, I couldn’t stop thinking how cool it would be to win a block mine on my own and send that BTC reward to a brand new bitcoin wallet.
This would mean that there is no public record of me receiving Bitaxe or Coldcard (outside of this article), and I would have a nice free KYC Bitcoin.
This article is a Take it. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.