Solo Mining: The Bitcoin Lottery, Honestly Calculated

Short answer: In solo mining you compute on your own instead of in a pool. If you find a block, the whole reward is yours: on Nov 13, 2026 about 3.15 bitcoin or €196’000. If you don't find one, you get nothing. With a small home device the chance is about 1 in 15’000 a year. Solo mining is a lottery, not a source of income.

Maybe you've read about it: a hobby miner with a small device on their desk finds an entire bitcoin block and receives over 3 bitcoin. It really happens, a few dozen times a year, worldwide. This article works out how likely that is with your device, what it costs you and who solo mining still makes sense for.

What is solo mining?

In bitcoin mining, miners around the world try out numbers until one of them produces a valid block. Whoever hits first gets the reward: since the 2024 halving, 3.125 new bitcoin plus the fees of the transactions in the block. How exactly that works is explained in the overview Bitcoin mining explained.

Almost all miners join together in pools. The pool computes with all devices together and shares every block it finds according to computing power. You then receive a small, predictable share every day.

With solo mining you do without that. Your device searches alone. If it hits, your address is in the block and the whole reward is yours. If it never hits, the electricity was wasted.

How big is the chance in solo mining?

Every attempt by your device has exactly the same chance as every attempt by a large mining company. Your chance of the next block therefore equals your share of the total computing power, the hashrate.

On Nov 13, 2026, mempool.space estimated the network hashrate at about 930 EH/s, which is 930 million TH/s. A mini miner with 1.2 TH/s has about one eight-hundred-millionth of that. Since about 144 blocks are found a day and 52’560 a year, that gives these chances:

As of Nov 13, 2026, hashrate 930 EH/s per mempool.space. The device figures are rounded examples for typical classes, not a buying recommendation.

For comparison: six correct numbers in Germany's Lotto 6aus49 have a chance of 1 in 14 million, with the bonus number (Superzahl) 1 in 140 million. One day of solo mining with a mini miner is therefore slightly more likely to win than six correct numbers on a Saturday. In Switzerland the lotto jackpot is 1 in 31.5 million.

Important: the chance does not grow with the time you have already been mining. If you have been unsuccessful for three years, tomorrow you have the same chance as on the first day. The figure "one block every 14’700 years" is not a due date but an average.

What a hit brings and what the ticket costs

In the last 144 blocks up to Nov 13, 2026, a block paid on average 3.149 bitcoin: 3.125 new bitcoin plus 0.024 bitcoin in fees. At €62’361 and CHF 57’644 per bitcoin, that is about €196’000 or CHF 181’500.

Against that stands the electricity, which you pay for certain, whether you hit or not. Calculated with the German household electricity price for 2026 of 37.0 cents per kWh (BDEW) and the Swiss median of 27.7 rappen (ElCom):

Just like the lottery, solo mining is a losing deal on average. The difference: in the lottery the operator keeps about half of the stakes. In solo mining the loss goes to the electricity supplier, and your device helps secure the network along the way.

Work it out yourself with your device, your electricity price and your time frame:

Solo mining or pool: the difference in one picture

Imagine 1’000 people, each running a mini miner. In a pool, each of them gets about 21’000 satoshis a year, roughly €13. Solo, 999 of them get nothing, and perhaps one gets everything within 15 years.

A large miner needs predictable income to pay for electricity and equipment. That's why almost no one with large computing power mines solo. For an 18-watt device on your desk, on the other hand, it doesn't matter: the €13 a year from the pool won't change your life, a block would.

How often do solo miners really find blocks?

Solo blocks are rare, but not a myth. mempool.space attributes every block to the pool or service that found it. In the 12 months up to Nov 13, 2026, 27 of 52’242 blocks came from solo services:

Source: mempool.space, as of Nov 13, 2026. The most recent hit: block 975’427 on Nov 11, 2026 via Solo CK, with a reward of 3.154 bitcoin.

Behind these services are thousands of devices, from mini miners to large ASICs. The statistics don't reveal who exactly hit. But they show: roughly every 2’000th block goes to someone who computed alone.

How solo mining works in practice

There are two ways, and both are simpler than many people think.

1. Buy a device. For the lottery, small, quiet devices with open software are enough, for example from the Bitaxe family. They usually cost a few hundred euros or francs and use as much electricity as a light bulb. Large ASICs are as loud as a vacuum cleaner and don't belong in the living room.
2. Choose a target. The easiest option is a solo service such as solo.ckpool.org, Public Pool or Braiins Solo. There you simply enter your own bitcoin address as the username. If your device finds a block, the block itself pays to your address, minus a small fee for the service.
3. Or go fully alone. If you run your own bitcoin node, you can run the pool software yourself, for example the open-source version of Public Pool. Then you build the block yourself and depend on no one.
4. Secure the address. The address must belong to a wallet whose keys only you hold. How to set one up is shown in the guide Set up your first wallet.
5. Be patient. You can only spend newly mined bitcoin after 100 more blocks, so after about 17 hours. That is a fixed rule of bitcoin.

When is solo mining worth it?

Financially, solo mining at home almost never pays off. But the same goes for mining in a pool: at household prices in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the electricity costs more than the device earns. Whether a pool at home can still pay off, for example with your own solar power, is worked out by the mining calculator.

Solo mining makes sense if you have another reason:

• Curiosity and learning: You want to see how mining works instead of just reading about it.
• Decentralisation: If you build your block yourself, you decide which transactions go into it. The more small miners do this, the less power the large pools have.
• The fun of the ticket: You spend a few euros on the lottery anyway and would rather have a ticket that also secures the network.
• Heat: In winter, every watt of your miner helps heat the room. With a mini miner you'll barely notice, with a large device you will.

If, on the other hand, you want to accumulate bitcoin, buying gets you there faster. For the €58 of electricity a mini miner uses, you could have bought about 93’000 satoshis on Nov 13, 2026. The expected value of mining was about 21’000 satoshis. How regular buying works out over years is shown in the savings plan calculator; which providers exist, in the comparison of bitcoin savings plans.

What the future means for solo miners

Three forces make the ticket smaller or different over the years:

The hashrate grows. New, more efficient devices join, and the difficulty follows. Your share then falls without you changing anything. How the difficulty catches up every two weeks is explained in the article Difficulty adjustment.

The halving halves the prize. From block 1’050’000, roughly in spring 2028, a block brings only 1.5625 new bitcoin plus fees. Measured in bitcoin, the jackpot is halved.

The price decides the value. A block is worth about €196’000 today. What it will be worth in ten years depends on the price. Where the price stands relative to its long-term trend is shown in the Power Law analysis with floor and zones; how we calculate is in the methodology. The model describes the past and is no guarantee.

Taxes: if you actually hit

A block you find is income, from the moment it arrives in your wallet, not only when you sell. In Germany the BMF (Federal Ministry of Finance) generally classifies mining as a commercial activity if it is carried out on a lasting basis with the intention of making a profit. The guide Bitcoin taxes in Germany explains the classification.

In Austria and Switzerland, too, mined bitcoin counts as income. With a hit worth about €196’000 or CHF 181’500, it pays to see a tax professional before you sell anything. Note the date, block number and price on the day of the hit.