Solo Mining: A Shot at 3.125 Bitcoin Every 10 Minutes

A tiny device on your desk, no bigger than the palm of your hand, using less power than a light bulb. And every 10 minutes, a chance to win over $200,000 in Bitcoin. That's solo mining, one of the most fascinating ways to get into Bitcoin mining.

What Is Solo Mining (Lotto Mining)?

In regular Bitcoin mining, you join a mining pool. Thousands of miners combine their hashrate and split the rewards. Steady payouts, predictable income, low risk.

Solo mining (also called lotto mining) is the opposite: you skip the pool and try to find a block on your own. If you do, you get the full reward of 3.125 Bitcoin plus transaction fees, currently around $220,000. If you don't, you get nothing.

What Are the Odds?

The Bitcoin network currently runs at around 970 exahash per second. Every 10 minutes, out of millions of mining devices worldwide, only one finds the next block.

With a Bitaxe Gamma, your odds per block are about 1 in 5.6 million. Over a full year: roughly 1 in 15,000.

For comparison: the classic 6/49 lottery sits at 1 in 14 million, EuroMillions at 1 in 140 million. Solo mining is about a thousand times more likely than winning the lottery and costs just a few dollars in electricity per year.

And It Actually Happens

Over 300 blocks have been found by solo miners since 2014. On April 7, 2026, a single NerdQAxe++ running about 5 TH/s solved a full block and earned 3.132 BTC. In March 2025, a Bitaxe Ultra with just 480 GH/s found a block and collected 3.15 BTC (around €237,000 at the time).

Which Devices Work Best?

You can solo mine with any Bitcoin miner, it's simply a pool setting. In practice, two devices are particularly popular:

The Bitaxe Gamma: 

• 1.3 TH/s
• about 15 watts
• fits on any desk. 

The NerdQAxe++:

• 5 TH/s
• significantly better odds
• also a compact desktop device
• has already proven itself by finding blocks solo.

You can also solo mine with top-tier hardware like the Bitmain S19 or S21, but most people run those in a regular pool because the economics make more sense.

Mining Pools & Payout Models

Since solo mining isn't a reliable income source, mining pools exist with different payout models.

FPPS (Full Pay Per Share)

Fixed payout per hash, regardless of whether the pool finds a block. No variance risk. Especially useful if you only mine a few hours a day with surplus solar power. This is our recommended model and the default setting on all 21energy products.

PPLNS (Pay Per Last N Shares)

You only get paid when the pool actually finds a block. Higher risk, but you also benefit from especially lucrative blocks with high transaction fees. Works well with high uptime and a long time horizon.

Where Is Most Mining Happening?

The US dominates with nearly 40%, followed by Russia (around 16%) and China (around 12%). Norway has some mining at electricity prices as low as $0.004/kWh, but the regulatory environment is becoming increasingly hostile.

In the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), large-scale commercial mining barely makes sense due to high industrial electricity prices. What does work: private mining with surplus solar power, dynamic tariffs, and using the waste heat to warm your home.

Who Is Lotto Mining For?

Lotto mining is not a business model. If you want reliable returns, use a mining pool with FPPS. But as an entry point into Bitcoin mining, a solo miner on your desk is hard to beat: you learn how the network works, and every 10 minutes you get a shot at the jackpot.

Starting at €199. And unlike a lottery ticket, you don't end up with a worthless piece of paper. Instead you have a working mining device that you can switch to a regular pool any time.

In our shop you'll find solo miners, professional mining hardware, and our Bitcoin heaters. Use the profitability calculator at 21energy.com to figure out which setup makes sense for you.

This post is based on the second episode of The MAXX Show with Maximilian Obwexer. The show airs every Tuesday at 6:00 PM live on YouTube.