Author of this article: Bit Big Pig
Disclaimer: This article only represents personal thoughts and does not constitute any investment advice.
0x00 Let me digress a little. My BTC position has been cleared.
When BTC broke through $93,000 for the first time this year, I withdrew all the BTC in my cold wallet and liquidated my position. It was not because I was pessimistic about the market outlook, but because I told everyone to buy the dips and start regular investments when BTC was between $15,000 and $18,000. When BTC reached $93,000, I thought my profit on BTC this round was enough, so I sold it and prepared to buy some large items at the same time.
After clearing out my BTC, I became lazy and rarely updated, but during this period, I started to pay attention to what the Geek circles abroad were doing, and eventually I discovered some interesting things, so I joined this circle and put some impossible things into practice.
0x01 Inspiration from SOLO mining by foreign geeks
In March 2025, a geek used a Bitaxe Nano to mine a BTC block at home, earning more than $260,000.
In 2024, a Russian geek successfully discovered a block after 9 months of SOLO mining, earning about $300,000.
There are many low-power DIY mining geeks on Reddit, Bitcointalk, and Twitter, discussing how to challenge the computing power of the entire network with only tens of watts of power consumption and extremely low cost.
These people are not trying to "get rich", but regard mining as a digital extreme sport, an experiment in fighting against cosmic probability.
I haven’t seen similar small circles in China yet. The Chinese community is more about trading coins, mining farms, and equipment businesses, and few people do this kind of “geek bet” that relies purely on luck + technology.
Maybe I can also set up a small domestic Solo mining community in the future? Haha. So, I decided to do it myself.
0x02 What is BTC mining? What are the mining methods? Why did I choose SOLO?
🧱 What is mining?
The BTC network generates a new block every 10 minutes, and all mining machines around the world are competing in computing power. Whoever calculates the hash value first will get the block reward (currently 3.125 BTC/BCH). This is like a "math guessing game" with the participation of the whole world at the same time.
The four most important factors in mining are: lines, mining machines, mining pools, and electricity costs.
Line: The mining process requires us to connect to the mining pool, but the mining pools in China are all blocked, so we need to use a third-party transit mining pool, or build a transit mining pool line by ourselves.
Mining machine: There is nothing much to say about this.
Mining pool: The mining machine must be connected to the mining pool to mine. In non-SOLO mode, the mining pool will allocate corresponding income to you according to your computing power.
Electricity: The cheaper the electricity, the better. For example, low-computing-power mining machines can be placed directly at the company's workstations, anyway, they only use the power of a computer. My friend just opened an IT company, and I only need to provide technical consulting support to his company occasionally, so he let me place two low-power mining machines in his company, so my electricity bill is basically free.
Note: When using a third-party transit mining pool, part of the computing power is likely to be stolen. This is because the mining protocol stratum itself is in plain text and can be easily tampered with by middlemen. Therefore, most third-party mining pools will regularly tamper with your mining traffic (for example, stealing 5% of the user's computing power by default) to achieve the effect of stealing part of your computing power. I will give you more information on this aspect when I have time.
There are currently three main mining modes:
The most mainstream of the three modes is "mining pool". Its main operating mode is to concentrate everyone's computing power. After mining BTC, the corresponding number of BTC is distributed in proportion to the computing power contributed by each person. This big pot meal model allows almost every miner to "have food to eat".
Among the three modes, Solo mining is the one that few people are willing to do, because the investment is unknown and the return is infinitely close to 0.
Why do I choose SOLO mining?
My budget is not high and I am not in a hurry to make a profit
I don't expect to earn a few cents every day, I want to get a "critical hit"
What I want to do is: "Play a lottery with fate" and then don't worry about anything.
0x03 144 “prize draws” per day, 1.89 million per block
The continuous running of the mining machine is equivalent to that you participate in 144 lotteries every day, and you never go offline, do not operate manually, and do not feel anxious. As long as there is no power outage and you do not go offline, you are constantly participating in this "cosmic lottery".
How much can you earn by mining a block?
0x04 My Equipment, Strategy, and Luck Model
I bought two low-hash, low-power, and noise-free Avalon Nano miners:
Computing power per unit: about 6T
Power: 140W, very quiet
Electricity fee: ≈50 yuan
Cost: 6000+ yuan (foreign e-commerce + Hong Kong transshipment)
My Solo Mining Strategy:
A SOLO mining BTC (big bet)
A SOLO mines BCH (you will get your money back if you mine it)
Technology related (important!!!):
Use international lines to build a transit mining pool (because scientific Internet access is required in China)
If you are a poacher in a company, you need to buy a portable WIFI + 4G data card to use for Internet access to avoid being detected by the company's data traffic equipment. The machine itself is silent and not large in size, so no one will notice the trick when it is placed at the workstation.
The mining pools for Solo mining can be ckpool, viabtc, 2miners, solopool, etc.
For BTC mining, I chose Ckpool mining pool:
For BCH mining I chose 2miners:
Theoretically, how many years of mining would it take to win the prize?
BTC annual winning rate: 0.00035 → theoretically about 2857 years
BCH annual winning rate: 0.067 → Theoretically about 15 years
You heard it right, but probability games don’t talk about averages. Some people may get a block in 9 months, while others may never get a block in their entire life.
0x05 Mining Winning Rate vs Lottery Winning Rate
The annual winning rate of SOLO mining is 5,000 times that of the Double Color Ball, but I know that I may never mine 1 BTC or BCH.
0x06 Bury a "Long-term Lottery Ticket" for Life
You may think this is fantasy, but I think it's more like "placing an order with the universe."
Unlike buying lottery tickets:
The lottery is a one-time thing, but the mining machine is "automatically buying lottery tickets" every day
Lottery costs money every time, but mining machines can run for many years after a one-time investment
The lottery is over once you see the result, but the mining machine may surprise you when you forget about it
If now:
The salary is average and there is not much capital
Life is stable, but lacks a sense of "critical hit"
There is free electricity (or electricity costs are very low)
Want to play with fate, but don't want to speculate in cryptocurrencies
But if you can accept the worst outcome, this might be a quiet, long-term, patient digital romance.
Then you can really consider getting a low-power SOLO mining machine. It may not necessarily change your destiny, but it can give your life more "possibilities."
0x07 ⚠️ Final reminder: Don’t have too much hope for it
Please don't think of this as a way to get rich.
SOLO mining means that the moment you buy the equipment, you have “lost thousands of dollars”.
It's a game of probability with a very low success rate unless you are extremely lucky.
so:
Borrowing money is not recommended
It is not recommended to buy a bunch of mining machines all in
It is not recommended to expect it to pay back
But if you can accept the worst outcome, this might be a quiet, long-term, patient digital romance.
Maybe one morning you will see a line in your diary:
Congratulations! Block found.
