Bitcoin’s network hashrate sits around 934 EH/s as of September 2026, and difficulty has settled near 127.45 trillion. Against numbers that size, a single home miner pulling 1 terahash per second looks like a rounding error. Yet solo mining has quietly become one of the more active corners of the hobbyist Bitcoin world in 2026, driven almost entirely by cheap open-source ASICs like the Bitaxe and free solo pools like Solo CKPool and Public Pool. Unlike joining a commercial pool and watching small, steady proportional payouts trickle in, solo mining means your device works entirely on its own, with nothing to show for it until the one moment it finds a full block and the entire reward lands in your wallet at once.
This tutorial walks through building a real solo mining setup from an unboxed Bitaxe to a working node connection, including the fee structures, the stratum configuration, the math on your actual odds, and what happens on the rare day you win. By the end you’ll have a running miner, a way to verify it’s actually contributing shares, a script that calculates your current odds on demand, and a clear sense of whether this is worth your time.
What “Solo” Bitcoin Mining Actually Means in 2026
Most Bitcoin mining today runs through large pools like F2Pool or Antpool, where thousands of participants combine hashpower and split rewards proportionally based on submitted shares. Solo mining flips that model. Your device submits shares to prove it’s working, but there’s no proportional payout. If your hardware happens to find the one valid hash that produces a block, you get the full block subsidy plus transaction fees. If it doesn’t, you get nothing, no matter how many shares you submitted.
The current block subsidy is 3.125 BTC, cut in half from 6.25 BTC at the April 2024 halving. Add in transaction fees and a found block can be worth well over $250,000 at prices seen through 2026. That lottery-style payout is exactly why solo mining with a low-powered device has turned into a genuine hobbyist subculture rather than staying a theoretical exercise. Services like Solo CKPool report at least 40 verified solo block wins since mid-2023, including three in early 2026, and Public Pool has logged seven reported solo finds, the most recent at block height 948146 in May 2026.
None of this changes the physics. A Bitaxe produces roughly a trillionth of the network’s total hashrate. What changed is the cost of entry: a device that can legitimately participate in that lottery now costs about as much as a mid-range pair of headphones, and the pools that support solo mining charge little to nothing to use.
Why Hobbyist Solo Miners Matter for Decentralization
There’s a second reason solo mining has gained attention beyond the lottery appeal, and it has nothing to do with any individual miner’s odds. Bitcoin’s pooled mining landscape has been drifting toward concentration, with reports of the top two mining pools controlling around 44% of network hashrate combined, enough to raise real questions about chain reorganizations and template diversity if that trend continues. Every large pool decides which transactions go into the blocks it builds and in what order, which matters more than most users realize.
A solo miner running Public Pool against their own full node builds its own block template from its own mempool view, independent of any large pool operator’s policies or outages. One hobbyist’s 1 TH/s doesn’t move the needle on its own, but thousands of Bitaxe owners doing the same thing collectively adds a layer of template diversity that pooled mining alone doesn’t provide. It’s a small, slow counterweight to pool centralization rather than a fix for it, but it’s a real one, and it’s part of why the Bitaxe project has stayed firmly open-source rather than turning into another closed commercial product.
Prerequisites: Hardware, Software, and Accounts You Need
You don’t need a mining farm or an electrical engineering degree for this setup. You do need a few specific pieces, and the exact Bitaxe model you buy determines your odds more than anything else in this tutorial.
- A Bitaxe open-source ASIC miner (Ultra, Supra, Gamma, or Touch model)
- A USB-C power supply rated for at least 20W, plus a micro-USB or USB-C data cable depending on your board revision
- A 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network (Bitaxe boards do not support 5GHz)
- A Bitcoin wallet capable of generating a fresh receiving address you control (Sparrow Wallet or a hardware wallet both work)
- A free account is not required for Solo CKPool, but you do need a dedicated payout address
- Optional: a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, or any small always-on Linux box, if you plan to self-host Public Pool or run a full node
- Optional: Bitcoin Core v31.1 or newer if you want to verify blocks independently instead of trusting the pool’s node
Hashrate differences between Bitaxe models are not small. Here’s how the current lineup compares, based on manufacturer and community-reported specifications as of late 2026:
| Bitaxe Model | ASIC Chip | Reported Hashrate | Power Draw | Approx. Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitaxe Ultra | BM1366 (S19 XP-derived) | 400–500 GH/s | 12–15W | From ~$100 |
| Bitaxe Supra | BM1368 (S21-derived) | 625–775 GH/s | 12–15W | ~$150–$200 |
| Bitaxe Gamma | BM1370 (S21 Pro-derived) | 1.0–1.2 TH/s | 15–21W | ~$100–$230 |
| Bitaxe Touch | BM1370 | ~1.6 TH/s | ~22W | Varies by seller |
Prices and even board revisions change often since these are produced by a distributed open-source community rather than one manufacturer, so check a current source like the d-Central Bitaxe buying guide before ordering. Power draw is the one number that barely moves: even the fastest Bitaxe variants sip under 25W, which is the entire reason solo mining with them is viable as a hobby rather than a utility bill disaster.
Beyond the board itself, budget for a case (most Bitaxe boards ship bare, with the board and a small heatsink exposed), a short USB-C cable rated for actual data in case you need to flash over USB rather than Wi-Fi, and a stable shelf or drawer away from dust and pets. None of this is expensive. A printed or 3D-printed case runs a few dollars, and most hobbyists already own a spare USB-C charger that covers the power requirement. The AxeOS web dashboard itself, which you’ll spend most of your setup time inside, shows live hashrate, temperature, fan speed, pool connection status, and voltage/frequency controls on a single page, no separate app or account required.
Solo CKPool vs Public Pool: Choosing Your Backend
Every solo miner needs a backend that accepts shares and, in the rare event of a win, broadcasts the completed block. Two options dominate the Bitaxe community: Solo CKPool, hosted by the CKPool team, and Public Pool, which you typically self-host. They’re not interchangeable, and the choice affects both your setup steps and your fee structure.
| Feature | Solo CKPool | Public Pool |
|---|---|---|
| Fee on a found block | 2% | 0% |
| Hosting | Pool-operated, no node needed | Usually self-hosted (e.g., via Umbrel) |
| Protocol | Stratum V1 | Stratum V1 |
| Typical stratum port | 3333 (e.g. solo.ckpool.org) | 21496 (per Bitaxe pool configurator) |
| Setup effort | Low — point and mine | Higher — requires running your own node and pool software |
If you’re mining with a single Bitaxe and want to start today, Solo CKPool is the lower-friction choice: you don’t need a synced node, and the 2% fee only applies on the rare day you actually find a block. If you’re already running a home server and like the idea of full self-sufficiency, Public Pool removes that fee entirely at the cost of maintaining your own node and pool software. Most hobbyists in the Bitaxe community start on Solo CKPool and migrate to Public Pool once they’re comfortable running a node anyway.
Latency to whichever pool you pick matters less than it would for a large mining operation, since a single Bitaxe submits shares infrequently enough that a few hundred milliseconds of round-trip time rarely costs you anything meaningful. Still, picking a regional CKPool endpoint closer to your actual location (the project publishes several, covering North America, Europe, and Asia) shaves off unnecessary reconnect delays if your home internet has any instability. AxeOS also lets you configure more than one pool entry with automatic failover, so you can set a preferred pool first and a backup second without needing to touch the device again if the primary ever drops.
Step-by-Step: Flashing and Configuring Your Bitaxe for Solo CKPool
Step 1: Unbox and Power On
Connect your Bitaxe to power using the included USB-C supply. On first boot, most current boards create a Wi-Fi access point named something like AxeOS_XXXXXX. Connect to that network from your phone or laptop and you’ll be redirected to a configuration page where you enter your home Wi-Fi credentials. Within a minute or two, the device reboots and joins your network, picking up a local IP address you’ll use for every subsequent step.
Step 2: Flash the Latest AxeOS Firmware
AxeOS is the open-source firmware that runs the Bitaxe’s web interface, stratum connection, and fan/voltage controls. Most boards ship with a recent build already installed, but flashing the current release fixes known stability bugs and unlocks newer efficiency tuning. Grab the current factory binary from the Bitaxe GitHub organization rather than an old cached download, then flash over USB with esptool, Espressif’s official flashing tool:
pip install esptool
esptool.py --chip esp32s3 --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 460800 \
write_flash -z 0x0 esp-miner-factory-full.binReplace the port with whatever your OS assigns to the device (check with ls /dev/tty* on Linux/macOS, or Device Manager on Windows). Once flashing completes, the device reboots into AxeOS and serves a configuration dashboard at its local IP address over plain HTTP.
Step 3: Generate a Dedicated Payout Address
Solo CKPool pays directly to whatever Bitcoin address you configure as your mining username, so generate a fresh address you control and don’t reuse elsewhere. If you’re running Bitcoin Core as your wallet, this is a single RPC call:
bitcoin-cli -named getnewaddress label="solo-mining-payout" address_type="bech32"A hardware wallet like a Trezor or a watch-only Sparrow Wallet setup works just as well, and arguably keeps your private keys further from anything internet-connected. Whatever you choose, write the address down exactly, since Solo CKPool treats your address as your account username, and a typo means shares get credited nowhere.
Step 4: Point the Bitaxe at Solo CKPool
In the AxeOS web dashboard, open the pool settings and enter Solo CKPool’s connection details. Your Bitcoin address becomes the stratum username, and the password field is conventionally just the letter x since CKPool doesn’t authenticate on password:
Pool URL: solo.ckpool.org
Port: 3333
Username: bc1qYOUR_PAYOUT_ADDRESS_HERE
Password: xCheck CKPool’s current status page for regional endpoints (such as eusolo.ckpool.org) that may give you lower latency than the default. Save the configuration and the Bitaxe reconnects automatically, usually within a few seconds.
Step 5: Confirm Your Shares Are Actually Counting
Don’t just trust the dashboard LED. CKPool exposes a public JSON endpoint per address so you can verify your miner is actually being credited:
curl -s https://solo.ckpool.org/users/bc1qYOUR_PAYOUT_ADDRESS_HEREA working connection returns something like this:
{
"hashrate1m": "1.21T",
"hashrate5m": "1.19T",
"hashrate1hr": "1.2T",
"lastshare": 1759334221,
"workers": 1,
"shares": 48213,
"bestshare": 892441003
}The field to watch is bestshare. It represents the best difficulty share you’ve submitted, and the higher it climbs relative to current network difficulty, the closer you theoretically got to a valid block on that attempt. It won’t predict a win, but it’s the only real feedback loop solo mining gives you between setup and (maybe) a payout.
Step-by-Step: Running Public Pool as a Zero-Fee Alternative
Step 6: Set Up a Public Pool Node
Public Pool charges no fee on a found block, but you give up the “just point and mine” simplicity of Solo CKPool. The common path is running it through Umbrel, a self-hosted app platform built for exactly this kind of home-server project. Install Umbrel on a Raspberry Pi 4/5 or a small always-on PC, then install the Public Pool app from Umbrel’s app store. Umbrel handles the underlying Bitcoin node sync and the pool software together, which removes most of the manual node administration you’d otherwise need.
Step 7: Connect Your Bitaxe to Your Local Public Pool Instance
Once Public Pool is running on your local network, point your Bitaxe at its local IP address instead of an external hostname:
Pool URL: 192.168.1.XX (your Umbrel device's local IP)
Port: 21496
Username: bc1qYOUR_PAYOUT_ADDRESS_HERE
Password: xBecause everything stays on your local network, latency to the pool itself is negligible, and you’re not dependent on an external service’s uptime. The tradeoff is that if your home internet or local node goes down, your miner is disconnected until you fix it yourself. There’s nobody else’s infrastructure to fall back on.
Step 8: Run a Bitcoin Full Node for Independent Verification
This step is optional with Solo CKPool, since their infrastructure handles block template construction and broadcasting for you. It’s close to mandatory if you want to self-host with Public Pool, and it’s good practice either way if you care about verifying your own transactions rather than trusting a third party’s node to tell you the truth about the chain. Bitcoin Core v31.1 is the current stable release as of this writing. A minimal node configuration looks like this:
# bitcoin.conf
server=1
txindex=1
rpcuser=solomining
rpcpassword=CHANGE_THIS_TO_SOMETHING_LONG
rpcallowip=192.168.1.0/24
prune=0Download Bitcoin Core only from the official GitHub repository and verify the release signature before running it, since fake “Bitcoin Core” binaries are a recurring scam vector. A quick signature check looks like this once you’ve imported the Bitcoin Core release signing keys:
gpg --verify SHA256SUMS.asc
sha256sum --check SHA256SUMS --ignore-missingInitial block download takes anywhere from several hours to a couple of days depending on your internet connection and storage speed, so start this well before you plan to go live with Public Pool. Plan for well over a terabyte of free disk space if you’re running unpruned with txindex=1, since the blockchain and its index both grow continuously. A reasonably fast SSD matters more here than CPU speed. Spinning disks will technically work, but initial sync on one can stretch from a day into a week or more.
Step 9: Calculate Your Real Odds Before You Get Excited
This is the step most tutorials skip, and it’s the one that matters most for setting expectations. The expected time to find a block scales directly with the ratio between your hashrate and the network’s total hashrate, multiplied by the roughly 10-minute average block interval. It helps to think of this the way you’d think about any other lottery: the math describes an average across an impossibly large number of parallel universes, not a schedule your specific device is working toward. With network hashrate around 934 EH/s, here’s what that looks like at different Bitaxe-scale hashrates:
| Miner Hashrate | Share of ~934 EH/s Network | Expected Time to Find a Block | Rough 1-Year Probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 GH/s (Ultra) | 1 in 1.87 billion | ~35,500 years | ~0.0028% |
| 700 GH/s (Supra) | 1 in 1.33 billion | ~25,400 years | ~0.0040% |
| 1.2 TH/s (Gamma) | 1 in 778 million | ~14,800 years | ~0.0068% |
| 6 TH/s (small cluster) | 1 in 156 million | ~2,970 years | ~0.034% |
Those expected-time numbers describe an average over an enormous number of trials, not a countdown. Block discovery is random and memoryless, meaning a miner can find a block in the first hour or never find one at all, regardless of how long the math says it should “typically” take. A reported case from November 2025 illustrates the point: a hobbyist running roughly 6 TH/s of Bitaxe Gamma hardware found a block through Solo CKPool, earning a reward of approximately 3.146 BTC, worth around $265,000 at the time, despite odds commonly cited around 1 in 180 million for that session. That’s the lottery nature of solo mining in one sentence: wildly unlikely, occasionally real, and not something to budget around.
If you want to run your own numbers whenever difficulty changes, here’s a small Python script that pulls live data from your node and computes the same math automatically:
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import requests
from decimal import Decimal
RPC_URL = "http://solomining:[email protected]:8332/"
MY_HASHRATE_HS = Decimal("1.2e12") # 1.2 TH/s example (Bitaxe Gamma)
def get_network_hashrate():
payload = {"jsonrpc": "1.0", "id": "odds", "method": "getnetworkhashps", "params": []}
r = requests.post(RPC_URL, json=payload, timeout=10)
return Decimal(str(r.json()["result"]))
def main():
network_hs = get_network_hashrate()
share = MY_HASHRATE_HS / network_hs
expected_blocks_per_year = share * Decimal(52560) # ~blocks/year at 10 min average
expected_years_per_block = Decimal(1) / expected_blocks_per_year
print(f"Network hashrate: {network_hs:.3e} H/s")
print(f"Your share of the network: 1 in {int(1/share):,}")
print(f"Expected time to find a block: {expected_years_per_block:,.0f} years")
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()Running it against a synced node gives output like:
Network hashrate: 9.340e+20 H/s
Your share of the network: 1 in 778,333,333
Expected time to find a block: 14,816 yearsSwap in your own hashrate and rerun it monthly. Difficulty adjusts roughly every two weeks, so your odds shift slightly over time even if your hardware never changes.
Step 10: Set Up Alerts So You Don’t Miss a Win
Given how rare a solo win is, the worst outcome imaginable is finding a block and not noticing for a week because nobody was watching the dashboard. Set up a simple polling script that checks your CKPool stats endpoint and pings you the moment your best share crosses network difficulty, which is the signal a block was found:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
ADDRESS="bc1qYOUR_PAYOUT_ADDRESS_HERE"
STATS=$(curl -s "https://solo.ckpool.org/users/$ADDRESS")
BEST=$(echo "$STATS" | python3 -c "import json,sys; print(json.load(sys.stdin)['bestshare'])")
echo "Current best share: $BEST"
# Compare $BEST against current difficulty and trigger a notification (ntfy.sh, email, Telegram bot, etc.) as neededRun it on a cron job every few minutes and wire the notification step to something like ntfy.sh, a Telegram bot, or even a simple email alert. It’s a small amount of extra setup for the only moment in this entire project that actually matters.
Step 11: Know What Happens the Day You Actually Win
If your miner finds a valid block, the pool’s node broadcasts it to the network immediately, there’s no delay for you to claim it manually. On Solo CKPool, the block subsidy and fees arrive at your configured address minus the 2% pool fee, typically credited once the block has a handful of confirmations. On a self-hosted Public Pool setup, the full reward goes to your address with no pool cut at all, since you’re running the infrastructure yourself.
Either way, don’t move the funds anywhere until you’ve confirmed the block is accepted by the wider network and isn’t an orphan. A tiny percentage of found blocks get orphaned when two blocks are found near-simultaneously and the network settles on the competing one, so it’s worth checking a block explorer like mempool.space to confirm your block stuck before celebrating too hard.
It’s also worth thinking about record-keeping before you win, not after. In most jurisdictions, newly mined Bitcoin counts as income at the market value on the day you receive it, separate from any capital gain or loss you’d owe later if you eventually sell. Screenshotting the block explorer confirmation, noting the exact timestamp, and recording the BTC/USD price at that moment takes two minutes and saves a real headache at tax time. This isn’t tax advice for your specific situation, just a habit worth building before, not after, a win arrives.
Common Pitfalls That Trip Up First-Time Solo Miners
- Using a 5GHz-only Wi-Fi network. Bitaxe boards generally only support 2.4GHz. If your router broadcasts a combined SSID that prefers 5GHz, create a separate 2.4GHz-only network for the miner.
- Reusing an address you’ve used elsewhere. A payout address tied to an exchange account or a wallet you’ve already spent from isn’t a security disaster, but it muddies your records and, on legacy address types, exposes your public key earlier than necessary.
- Assuming shares equal progress. Submitting a million shares tells you your hardware is online and healthy. It says nothing about how close you are to a block, since each hash attempt is independent of the last.
- Skipping firmware updates. Older AxeOS builds have had efficiency bugs and occasional stratum reconnect issues that make a miner silently drop offline for hours without alerting you.
- Underestimating thermal throttling. Even at 15–20W, a Bitaxe in a poorly ventilated enclosure can throttle its clock speed, quietly cutting your already-tiny odds further.
- Treating Public Pool’s zero fee as pure upside. Running your own node and pool software means you’re also the one responsible for uptime, security patches, and disk space. A 2% fee on an event that may never happen is cheap insurance against all of that.
- Not verifying the official Bitcoin Core release signature. Fake “wallet” and “node” installers imitating Bitcoin Core are a known distribution vector for malware. Only download from the official repository and check the signature.
- Forgetting that pool-reported hashrate and actual chip hashrate drift apart. A rising temperature or a flaky power supply can quietly drop your real hashrate well below what the device claims on its sticker, shrinking your odds without any obvious error message.
Troubleshooting Guide for Solo Mining Setups
- AxeOS web dashboard won’t load at all: Confirm the Bitaxe actually joined your network by checking your router’s connected-devices list for its hostname, then try the IP address directly instead of any cached hostname your browser remembers.
- Bitaxe won’t join Wi-Fi after flashing: Factory-reset by holding the onboard button during power-up, then redo the Wi-Fi setup from the AxeOS access point.
- Dashboard shows 0 H/s after boot: Give it 60–90 seconds for the ASIC to initialize. If it stays at zero, check the voltage/frequency settings weren’t pushed too aggressively in a prior overclock attempt.
- curl to the CKPool stats endpoint returns an empty response: Double-check the address matches exactly what you configured as the stratum username, including the bc1q prefix and case.
- Hashrate reported by AxeOS doesn’t match CKPool’s reported hashrate: This is normal. Pool-reported hashrate is a rolling average based on submitted shares, so it lags behind the device’s instantaneous reading, especially over short windows like 1 minute.
- Stratum keeps disconnecting every few minutes: Usually a Wi-Fi signal strength issue. Move the Bitaxe closer to your router or add a Wi-Fi extender rather than tolerating constant reconnects.
- Bitcoin Core won’t finish syncing: Check available disk space first. A full unpruned node needs several hundred gigabytes and growing. If space is tight, set
pruneto a fixed size in bitcoin.conf, though note this conflicts withtxindex=1. - Public Pool app won’t connect through Umbrel: Confirm the underlying Bitcoin node app in Umbrel has finished its initial sync first. Public Pool depends on an available, synced node to build block templates.
- Best share value isn’t climbing over time: This one is just variance. Best share is the record of your single luckiest attempt since the counter last reset, and it can plateau for long stretches purely by chance.
- RPC calls to bitcoin-cli return a connection refused error: Check that
rpcallowipin bitcoin.conf includes the IP range you’re calling from, and that the node has fully started before scripts try to query it.
Advanced Tips for Serious Hobbyist Miners
Once your basic setup is stable, a few adjustments can squeeze out meaningfully better odds without meaningfully higher electricity costs. AxeOS exposes voltage and frequency sliders directly in its web dashboard, and modest overclocking can push a Gamma board past its stock 1.2 TH/s rating, though it comes with higher heat output and a real risk of instability if pushed too far. Pair any overclock with active cooling, even a small 40mm fan, since these boards have minimal thermal mass and heat up fast under sustained higher clocks.
If you own more than one Bitaxe, you can point all of them at the same Public Pool instance or the same CKPool address, effectively combining your odds the way the November 2025 block-winner’s roughly 6 TH/s cluster did. Community-run leaderboards, like the win tracker maintained by d-Central, log confirmed solo wins across the Bitaxe ecosystem and are worth following if you want a sense of how often this is actually happening across the broader hobbyist base rather than just your own setup.
Some hobbyists also run a secondary, failover pool configuration: a primary entry pointed at their self-hosted Public Pool node, with Solo CKPool configured as a backup in AxeOS’s pool settings. If your home node or internet connection drops, the Bitaxe falls over to the external pool automatically instead of sitting idle until you notice. It costs you the 2% fee only during whatever window the backup is actually in use, which for a stable home setup should be rare.
Finally, if you’re running Public Pool through Umbrel, back up your node’s wallet descriptor and your Umbrel app configuration separately from the node’s blockchain data. A corrupted SD card on a Raspberry Pi is a far more common failure mode than anything related to mining itself, and losing your configuration after weeks of uptime is a frustrating way to end a project.
Is Solo Mining Worth It? The Honest Economics
Measured purely as an investment, solo mining with a Bitaxe does not make financial sense. The expected-value math is straightforward: your tiny probability of winning, multiplied by a large but rare payout, works out to a long-run expected return that’s a fraction of a cent per day relative to your hardware cost at any realistic hashrate. Electricity is genuinely cheap, often under $2 a month even running continuously, but that’s not the real cost. The real cost is tying up $100 to $230 in hardware for a return that, on paper, takes tens of thousands of years to materialize on average.
Here’s a rough one-time cost breakdown for a single-device setup, separate from whatever you decide to spend on a second or third unit later:
| Item | Approx. Cost | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Bitaxe board (Ultra to Gamma) | $100–$230 | Yes |
| USB-C power supply | $5–$15 (often already owned) | Yes |
| Case or enclosure | $5–$20 | Recommended |
| Small cooling fan | $5–$10 | Recommended if overclocking |
| Raspberry Pi 4/5 for Umbrel | $60–$100 | Only for self-hosted Public Pool |
| SSD for full node storage | $50–$80 for 1TB+ | Only if running your own node |
If you go the simplest route, a single Bitaxe on Solo CKPool, you’re looking at well under $150 all-in with no ongoing software to maintain. Adding a full self-hosted Public Pool setup roughly doubles or triples that up-front cost but eliminates the pool fee permanently and gives you a general-purpose Bitcoin node you can also use for wallet software, block exploration, and privacy-preserving transaction broadcasting.
What the math doesn’t capture is why people actually do this. It’s a low-cost way to directly participate in Bitcoin’s consensus process, run and understand your own node, and hold a small, real (if minuscule) chance at a genuinely life-changing event, all for less than the price of a video game console. Framed as a hobby with a very long-shot lottery ticket attached rather than a mining business, the economics look a lot more reasonable. Just don’t mistake the occasional viral story about a Bitaxe winning a block for a realistic planning assumption.
FAQ
What’s the difference between solo mining and joining a regular pool?
A regular pool combines many miners’ hashpower and pays out proportionally based on shares submitted, giving small, steady rewards. Solo mining keeps your hardware independent: you get nothing until you find a full block yourself, at which point you keep the entire reward minus whatever fee your solo pool charges.
How much does a Bitaxe cost and how much power does it use?
Current models range from roughly $100 for a Bitaxe Ultra to around $230 for a higher-end Bitaxe Gamma board, and all of them draw somewhere between 12W and 22W, depending on the model and clock settings.
Is Solo CKPool or Public Pool better for a single Bitaxe?
Solo CKPool is simpler to set up since it requires no node of your own and charges a 2% fee only if you win. Public Pool charges no fee but requires you to run and maintain your own node and pool software, usually through Umbrel.
What are my actual odds of finding a block with a Bitaxe?
At current network hashrate around 934 EH/s, a 1.2 TH/s Bitaxe Gamma has roughly a 1 in 778 million chance per attempt, translating to an average expected wait of around 14,800 years. These are long-run averages, and actual outcomes are random.
Do I need to run my own Bitcoin node to solo mine?
Not with Solo CKPool, which handles block template construction and broadcasting on its own infrastructure. You do need your own synced node if you choose to self-host with Public Pool.
What happens if I find a block but it gets orphaned?
Orphaned blocks happen when two valid blocks are found close together and the network settles on a competing chain. It’s uncommon, but it means your reward from that specific block wouldn’t be confirmed. Checking a block explorer after a win confirms whether your block stuck.
Can I combine multiple Bitaxe units to improve my odds?
Yes. Pointing several units at the same payout address and pool adds their hashrates together, proportionally improving your odds. A reported November 2025 solo win came from roughly 6 TH/s of combined Bitaxe Gamma hardware rather than a single unit.
Is solo mining profitable in 2026?
Not in a strict expected-value sense at Bitaxe-scale hashrates. The odds are too long relative to hardware cost. Most people running these setups treat it as a low-power hobby and a long-shot lottery ticket rather than a profit strategy.
Can I run a Bitaxe alongside a normal ASIC miner pointed at a commercial pool?
Yes, and plenty of hobbyists do exactly that. There’s no technical conflict between running a larger pooled miner for steady rewards and a separate Bitaxe pointed at a solo pool for the long-shot upside. They’re independent devices with independent pool connections, so one doesn’t affect the other’s configuration or payouts.
