Bitcoin mining at home

Bitcoin mining started as nerds playing with their new hobby. Many early miners found their retirement without even knowing it. Back when block rewards were 50 BTC, plebs could stack sats with unheard of levels of volume, ease, and profitability.

With new technology coming out and improving by the day, these plebs no longer are at the forefront of mining. Still, bitcoiners are smart. They find ways to innovate and learn. Transitioning from loud, power-hungry hardware to streamlined solutions like virtual hashrate, which allows anyone to use bitcoin hashrate without the logistical headaches of physical rigs.

What started as a way for cypherpunks to send money electronically has evolved into multiple publicly traded companies working to secure the strongest computer network in the world. This change is a testament to bitcoin’s staying power and true usefulness in society. Energy grids want miners for stability.

How does bitcoin mining work?

Before going into the specifics of solo lottery mining and how to do it at home, it’s important to have a basic understanding of how things work.

Miners, the thousands of supercomputers spread across the globe, compete both with and against each other to compile and verify transactions made. The first miner to successfully guess a number – an extremely, extremely large number – receives the block reward plus all transaction fees recorded since the previous block (usually 10 minutes).

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The purpose of mining is to receive brand new bitcoin, typically for less than the price of producing it – the electricity cost to run a bitcoin miner. As discussed, bitcoin mining evolved over the years, where now it makes the most sense to mine with a pool in order for sustained, profitable bitcoin mining. Payouts are split according to how much computing power is given to a pool. If John produces 15% of a pool’s power, and Jake produces 5% of the same pool’s power, they receive 15% and 5% of the block reward for every block they find.

Companies have taken this idea and flown with it. For a while, plebs were forced out, but plebs will pleb. Nothing can stop their love of bitcoin and securing the network.

A new way to approach this is through virtual hashrate platform, which allows you to get direct exposure to hashrate without the logistical burden of physically mining yourself. This platform provides all-inclusive access to hashrate without hidden electricity or maintenance fees, ensuring nothing stops the love of bitcoin and securing the network.

Enter at-home bitcoin solo lottery mining

Not everyone can have a massive data center with thousands of bitcoin miners BRRRing their way to consistent sats. Solo lottery mining has emerged for those that want the fun of mining with low cost, low chance, but very high reward. Plebs have started to use obsolete miners as space heaters, and rather than make a tiny contribution to a massive mining pool, they take the massive chance at finding an entire block.

Small miners with roughly 1 TH/s are commonly used in solo lottery mining. According to SoloChance.com, those are some slim odds.

Still, why not take the chance? It costs basically nothing to run an S9 and the reward is life-changing. It’s called solo lottery mining for a reason. Most plebs who participate understand there are extremely slim odds, but they do it for the love of bitcoin. There are more expensive hobbies that don’t offer the possibility of reward too. A commonly heard FUD is that governments will “ban” bitcoin mining. That will be difficult to enforce with thousands of plebs doing their part to secure the network with a bitcoin miner or two in the comfort of their own homes.

How to participate in bitcoin solo lottery mining

Part of the reason why plebs partake in this fun hobby is for education. There is never a bad time to learn about bitcoin, and configuring your very own miner offers a snapshot of what goes on at these industrial-sized mining facilities.

When setting up an ASIC, to play the never-ending bitcoin lottery, all you have to do is enter a solo pool URL and wallet address.

Braiins Solo is an incredibly easy tool to start solo mining. Our solo pool is open to anybody – just enter the pool URL into your miner, with your bitcoin wallet address as your username. The pool URL is:

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stratum+tcp://solo.stratum.braiins.com:3333

What are the odds?

Like we discussed, the odds of finding a block with just one ASIC are low. At the time of writing, the odds are roughly 1 in 249,694,649 blocks when mining with 1 TH/s. In one year, that is roughly 1 in 4,750. In terms of a lottery, those odds aren’t that crazy.

Despite the astronomical odds, it is slowly becoming its own industry. Many companies have released products that easily let users solo lottery mine. It makes sense, too. The odds of winning the Powerball or Mega Millions is roughly 1 in 300,000,000. Those lotteries only happen once every few days, too. A new bitcoin block is found every ten minutes on average. So, thanks to bitcoin, people can play the lottery automatically hundreds of times a day with a cool supercomputer, or they can purchase (easily lost) physical tickets regularly, with much worse odds.

While the odds are slim, solo lottery miners can be rewarded with more than just bitcoin. The sovereignty and decentralization of bitcoin is worth protecting, and even adding 1 TH to the network secures it a little bit more. Bitcoin is about more than money. It’s an ideology. When more people participate – no matter how small – it improves. Any time the network can get more decentralized, the network improves.

Solo lottery mining success stories

Obviously, this is a pretty fascinating subject. What’s more fascinating, however, is the results. There are several examples of bitcoin solo lottery miners finding blocks and reaping massive rewards.

Finding a bitcoin block on your own would be life-changing – there’s no denying that. It’d also be cool as hell. Being able to look at the entire public bitcoin ledger and say that block is my own would be unbelievable. It’d make you a bitcoin legend.

Rather than investing in expensive ASICs, users can start with as little as 10,000 sats to secure computing power virtual hashrate platform. 

Depending on your goals, there are two distinct ways to utilize the platform:

• Marketplace - A transparent, real-time trading floor for computing power. Users can navigate a live order book to bid on hashrate, which is then streamed directly to their preferred mining pool. 
• Solo Lottery Mining: This is a one-click solution that lets you purchase a massive burst of hashrate to hunt for a single bitcoin block. The hashrate is automatically deployed to Braiins Solo, meaning you can try your luck at a full block reward instantly without any additional settings or technical configuration.

Education

While Braiins is known for its wide-ranging software stack, we also value education. Our blog and books are full of useful information to get you in the right direction when it comes to bitcoin mining.

The Ultimate Bitcoin Mining Guide book, authored by our CMO Kristian Csepcsar, can be your friendly roadmap to the world of bitcoin mining. It is the ultimate guide for newcomers, swapping dense tech-talk for simple analogies to help you start mining and understand the future of money.

Remember – to mine more bitcoin, mine with Braiins.