Lottery Mining: How I Solo Mine Bitcoin with a NerdMiner

Gonna win the block reward any day now. 🤓

Last month, I attended BTC Prague 2023, where I picked up a NerdMiner.

A NerdMiner is a small computer that enables you to mine bitcoin from home with a tiny amount of hashrate. The chances of ever finding a valid block (to win the Block reward) with it are close to zero, but it’s a fun gadget to play around with to learn a bit more about Bitcoin mining. 

What Is Lottery Mining? 

Bitcoin mining has evolved over the years. In the early days, you could mine hundreds of bitcoin with your home computer. However, once more computational power was needed, these CPUs reached a limit, and miners had to upgrade to GPUs. 

Those didn’t work too long, either, as the difficulty of finding a new block became increasingly more challenging as more and more miners entered the game. Eventually, dedicated computers were built; his is where ASICs were born.

ASICs mining machines still in use today. Therefore, if you plan to venture into the Bitcoin mining business today (even as an individual) you will have to buy a bunch of ASICs miners, gain access to cheap electricity, and participate in a mining pool to increase your chances of running a profitable Bitcoin mining operation.  

Lottery mining is a different story.

You still mine bitcoin but with a less powerful computer that doesn’t add the vast amount of hash rate ASICs do. The NerdMiner is such a device, as it’s only outputting 20.5 KH/S, which means you’re more likely to win the actual lottery several times over than finding a block and collecting the Bitcoin block reward. 

This is why we also refer to solo mining as lottery mining because the chances of finding a block are so slim that it’s like playing the lottery.

In fact, given the odds it probably makes more sense to play the lottery rather than buy a few of these NerdMiners and participate in the hunt for the next block. 

However, making money is not really the point of the NerdMiner.

WTF Is a NerdMiner? 🤓

The NerdMiner is an open-source project by BitMaker that allows you to mine bitcoin with a small piece of hardware. 

Everyone can participate by buying the NerdMiner pre-built or getting the parts to build it yourself. It’s not that complicated; if you’ve ever made a Raspberry Pi, you can also build a NerdMiner.

Once the hardware is set up, you can go to BitMaker’s GitHub to download the OS and get started. Once the OS is installed and you have everything set up, you only need to follow the instructions on the screen, add a Bitcoin wallet address and connect your NerdMiner to WiFi. 

In the end, you’ll see the display of the NerdMiner come on and hear how it starts mining. You can speed up the process by buying the NerdMiner pre-built (like I did) and having everything set up. This way, you only need to follow the instructions and connect to WiFi. I got my from SatoshiStore.io, btw.

Truth be told, getting my NerdMiner to work took me a few attempts, but I got there in the end (with the help of someone in a solo-mining Telegram group).

Now, I have my NerdMiner running next to me on my desk in my home office, with its cooling fan serenading me with the sound of contributing hashrate to the most secure open monetary network in the world.

Winning the 6.25 BTC Block Reward? Yeah, probably not.  

The chances of finding a block to win the 6.25 BTC (around $190,000) block reward are essentially zero. 

To be more specific, according to solochance.com, there’s a 1 in 107,941,985,322,222 chance per day to win the block reward.

So, any day now. 😁

If you want to learn more about Bitcoin mining and want to contribute some hashrate towards taking down the fiat monetary system (😉), grab (or build) yourself a NerdMiner and have some fun.

You can even use portable WiFi and take your NerdMiner with you on the go. All you need is an internet connection and a power bank. Or, if you want, you’ll now have a new gadget on your desk or somewhere at home to show friends and family how bitcoin mining works.

But don’t expect to hit the jackpot and win the block reward. No one’s THAT lucky! 😊

Peace, love & anarchy,

Alex Lielacher