Every Hash Counts: The Philosophy Behind Solo Mining

The Block That Changed Everything

On July 24, 2024, a single Bitaxe — an open-source Bitcoin miner with roughly 3 TH/s of hashrate — found a valid Bitcoin block. Block 853,742. The entire block reward, 3.125 BTC, went to one solo miner running a device that draws about 15 watts from a wall outlet.

The network hashrate at the time was over 600 exahashes per second. This Bitaxe represented approximately 0.0000000005% of the total hashrate. The odds were absurd. The probability was infinitesimal. And it happened anyway.

That block was not just a statistical anomaly. It was a manifesto. It proved that in Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism, there is no minimum stake, no gatekeeping, no required capital threshold. A $200 device running on the same electricity as a light bulb can produce the same valid proof-of-work as a $200 million mining farm. The protocol does not care about your budget. It cares about your hash.

This is the philosophy behind solo mining. This is why every hash counts.

What Solo Mining Actually Means

When you mine Bitcoin solo, your device works independently to find a valid block header hash. There is no pool operator collecting your hashrate and distributing fractional rewards. There is no middleman. Your miner generates candidate block headers, applies SHA-256 twice, and checks whether the resulting hash meets the current difficulty target. If it does — and only if it does — you submit the block to the network and claim the entire reward.

The mathematics are straightforward. Every hash attempt has an independent, equal probability of being the one that solves the block. It does not matter whether that hash was computed by a warehouse full of S21s or by a single Bitaxe Supra on someone’s bookshelf. Each hash has the same chance. The network does not weigh hashes by the reputation, size, or investment of the miner who produced them.

This is not a metaphor. This is literally how Bitcoin’s proof-of-work consensus operates. The protocol is agnostic to everything except mathematical validity. Satoshi designed it this way on purpose.

The Lottery Analogy (And Why It Falls Short)

People call solo mining “lottery mining,” and the comparison is useful but incomplete.

Yes, solo mining with a Bitaxe is probabilistically similar to buying a lottery ticket. Your odds of finding a block on any given day are vanishingly small. The expected time between blocks for a single 500 GH/s miner at current difficulty is measured in centuries or millennia, not weeks. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

But here is where the lottery analogy breaks down: a lottery ticket is a dead asset. You buy it, you scratch it, it either wins or it goes in the trash. Mining is not like that. Every hash you compute is a genuine contribution to Bitcoin’s security model. Even if your hash does not solve a block, the act of hashing strengthens the network by making it more expensive for any attacker to achieve majority hashrate.

When you buy a lottery ticket, you are extracting value from a system designed to profit from your loss. When you solo mine, you are contributing value to a system designed to resist censorship and centralization. The ticket analogy captures the probability, but it misses the purpose entirely.

Solo mining is not gambling. It is participation.

The Decentralization Imperative

Bitcoin’s security model depends on one assumption above all others: that no single entity controls a majority of the network’s hashrate. If any pool, corporation, or government achieves 51% of the hash power, they can theoretically censor transactions, double-spend coins, and undermine the entire system.

Look at the current hashrate distribution. A small number of large mining pools control the vast majority of blocks. AntPool, Foundry, ViaBTC, F2Pool — these pools are operated by identifiable companies, subject to regulatory pressure, and concentrated in specific jurisdictions. When you send your hashrate to a pool, you are delegating your block-building authority to a pool operator. You are trusting them to construct blocks fairly, include all valid transactions, and resist censorship demands.

That trust is not unreasonable in normal times. But Bitcoin was not built for normal times. Bitcoin was built for the times when trust breaks down, when authorities seize assets, when banks freeze accounts, when censorship is not hypothetical but real. In those moments, the decentralization of mining hashrate becomes existentially important.

Solo mining is the purest form of decentralization. When you mine solo, your hashrate answers to no pool operator. Your block template is yours. If you find a block, it includes whatever valid transactions your node knows about, without filtering by any third party. You are a sovereign miner — one node, one miner, one vote in the consensus process.

Every Bitaxe running solo is one more independent voice in the network. Every hash it produces is one more unit of decentralized security. The hashrate may be tiny relative to the network total, but the principle it represents is infinite: no gatekeepers, no permission required, no minimum stake to participate.

Probability vs. Passion

Let us be honest about the numbers. A Bitaxe Supra running at 500 GH/s against a network doing 700+ EH/s has a probability of finding a block on any given hash of approximately 1 in 1.4 quadrillion. At 500 billion hashes per second, you get roughly 43 trillion attempts per day. Your daily probability of finding a block is somewhere around 0.003%.

Those are not good odds. No rational financial analysis would recommend solo mining with a Bitaxe as an investment strategy. If you are optimizing purely for expected return, you should pool mine with the most efficient ASIC you can afford.

But here is the thing: not everything valuable is rational in the financial sense.

People climb mountains knowing they might not reach the summit. People run marathons knowing they will not win. People plant trees knowing they will never sit in the shade. These acts have value precisely because they are not reducible to cost-benefit analysis. They are expressions of commitment, belief, and identity.

Solo mining with a Bitaxe is an expression of what you believe Bitcoin should be. It says: I believe in decentralization enough to contribute my own hashrate, even when the odds are against me. I believe that every hash matters, not because it will make me rich, but because it makes the network stronger. I believe in open-source hardware, permissionless participation, and the cypherpunk ethos that built this protocol in the first place.

If you need a spreadsheet to justify solo mining, you have already missed the point.

The Community of Solo Miners

Solo mining might sound lonely, but it is anything but. The solo mining community — particularly around Bitaxe and open-source miners — is one of the most passionate and supportive corners of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The #TeamNerdminer movement started as a grassroots celebration of entry-level mining. People sharing photos of their Nerdminers, tracking community hashrate, and cheering every submitted share. It grew into a broader ethos: the idea that you do not need a warehouse to participate in Bitcoin’s consensus.

Then came #TheBitaxeChallenge — a community-driven initiative to see how many independent Bitaxe miners could run simultaneously, contributing solo hashrate from kitchens, offices, shelves, and workshops around the world. Not for profit. For the principle.

When that first Bitaxe found block 853,742, the celebration was not just about one miner’s luck. It was a community victory. Proof that the decentralized ideal works. Proof that open-source hardware can compete with closed, proprietary systems. Proof that the little miner on your desk is not a toy — it is a node in the most important distributed system humanity has ever built.

D-Central has been part of this community since the beginning. We were among the first to manufacture the Bitaxe Mesh Stand, develop custom heatsinks for Bitaxe, and build the ecosystem of accessories that makes these devices practical for everyday use. We stock every Bitaxe variant because we believe in the mission, not just the margin.

Open Source: Mining Without Permission

The Bitaxe is the first open-source Bitcoin ASIC miner. Its schematics, firmware, and PCB designs are public. Anyone can manufacture one. Anyone can modify the design. Anyone can audit the code running on their miner to verify it does exactly what it claims and nothing more.

This matters more than most people realize.

When you buy a proprietary Antminer, you are running firmware that only Bitmain can inspect. You trust that it hashes honestly, that it does not redirect a percentage of your hashrate, that it does not phone home with data about your operation. That trust has been violated before. Firmware-level attacks on ASIC miners are documented. Malicious firmware that redirects hashrate has been discovered in the wild.

With open-source miners running AxeOS, you can audit every line of code. The firmware is built in the open. The community reviews it. If someone attempted to introduce malicious code, hundreds of eyes would catch it. This is the same principle that secures Linux, Bitcoin Core, and every other critical open-source project.

Open-source mining hardware is not just a feature. It is a philosophical requirement for a protocol that depends on trustlessness. If you cannot verify, you must trust. And the entire point of Bitcoin is to minimize trust.

The cypherpunks who built the foundations of digital privacy and decentralized systems operated on a principle: code that cannot be inspected cannot be trusted. Bitaxe and the broader open-source miner movement carry that principle into the mining layer. Your miner, your rules, your audit. No permission required.

Not About Profit. About Participation.

The question “Is solo mining profitable?” is asked constantly and answered easily: no, not in expected value terms. The expected return of solo mining with a Bitaxe, calculated as probability of finding a block multiplied by block reward minus electricity cost, is negative. It will almost certainly cost you more in electricity over your lifetime than you will earn in block rewards.

But this framing misses what solo mining actually is.

Running a Nerdminer costs about $3 per year in electricity. A Bitaxe Supra costs about $15 per year. A Bitaxe GT, maybe $30. These are not financial commitments that require ROI analysis. They are less than a monthly streaming subscription. Less than a single restaurant meal.

For this cost, you get:

• Direct participation in Bitcoin’s consensus mechanism. You are not a spectator. You are a miner. Your hashes contribute to the network’s total proof-of-work, making it marginally more expensive for any attacker to overwhelm the system.
• A non-zero chance of finding a full block reward. Is it likely? No. Is it possible? Block 853,742 says yes. And unlike a lottery ticket, your miner keeps hashing 24/7, generating new chances every nanosecond.
• Independence from pool operators. Your hashrate, your block template, your rules. No pool can censor your transactions or redirect your hash power.
• A tangible connection to Bitcoin’s technology. Watching your Bitaxe display tick through nonces in real time is a fundamentally different experience from checking a portfolio balance on your phone. You understand what proof-of-work IS, not just what it represents.
• Support for open-source hardware. Every Bitaxe sold is a vote for transparent, auditable mining technology against proprietary black boxes.

At D-Central, our core ethos is technology-first, not investment-first. We are passionate about Bitcoin as a technology — mining, decentralized systems, censorship resistance, individual sovereignty. The narrative is never about financial gains or price speculation. We are technologists, builders, and enthusiasts of decentralized censorship-resistant systems. Investment returns are a byproduct, not the mission.

Solo mining embodies this ethos perfectly. You do not solo mine to get rich. You solo mine because you believe in what Bitcoin is building. The sats are a bonus. The sovereignty is the point.

The Block Reward Is Not the Reward

When someone asks “What is the reward for solo mining?” the obvious answer is 3.125 BTC per block (plus transaction fees). But that is the block reward, and it is not the only reward.

The real reward of solo mining is harder to quantify and more valuable than Bitcoin denominated in fiat currency:

Knowledge. Setting up a Bitaxe teaches you about ASIC chips, SHA-256 hashing, mining pools, network difficulty, nonce space, block headers, and the mechanics of proof-of-work. You cannot truly understand Bitcoin’s security model without understanding mining, and you cannot understand mining without doing it.

Resilience. A solo miner running on your home network is infrastructure you control. It does not depend on any service, platform, or third party. If every mining pool shut down tomorrow, your Bitaxe would still be hashing. It would just be hashing against a lot less competition.

Community. The solo mining community is composed of people who prioritize principles over profits. These are the Bitcoiners who run nodes, who verify their own transactions, who hold their own keys, who mine their own blocks. They are the cypherpunk core of the movement, and being part of that community has value that does not show up on a balance sheet.

Legacy. Every hash you produce is recorded in the competition for the next block, and the block after that, and every block that follows. You are part of the ongoing proof-of-work that secures the world’s most important monetary network. Long after the Bitcoin price on any given day is forgotten, the chain of proof-of-work will endure. Your hashes are in that chain — not as a winner necessarily, but as a participant, an honest node doing honest work.

Getting Started with Solo Mining

If this philosophy resonates with you, getting started is simpler than you think.

Step 1: Choose your miner. For pure education, start with a Nerdminer. For real ASIC-powered solo mining, the Bitaxe Supra is the entry point. For better odds, look at the Bitaxe Gamma, Bitaxe GT, or Bitaxe Hex. Visit our Bitaxe Hub for a complete comparison of every model.

Step 2: Set up your miner. We have written step-by-step setup guides for every device:

• Nerdminer Setup Guide
• Bitaxe Supra Setup Guide
• Bitaxe Gamma Setup Guide
• Bitaxe GT Setup Guide
• Bitaxe Hex Setup Guide
• NerdAxe Setup Guide
• NerdQAxe++ Setup Guide

Step 3: Point at a solo pool. Pools like solo.ckpool.org allow solo miners to submit work without joining a traditional pool. Your miner hashes independently. If you find a block, the reward goes to your wallet. The “pool” simply handles the network communication.

Step 4: Let it run. Set it, forget it, and check occasionally. Your miner will hash 24/7, silently building decentralized security and buying lottery tickets for a full block reward. For overclocking tips to maximize your hashrate, and troubleshooting help if anything goes wrong, we have guides for those too.

The Cypherpunk’s Miner

In 1993, Eric Hughes wrote in “A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto”: “We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.”

Fifteen years later, Satoshi Nakamoto built the electronic money Hughes envisioned. And the consensus mechanism Satoshi chose — proof-of-work mining — was deliberately designed so that anyone with a computer could participate. Not anyone with a license. Not anyone with a bank account. Not anyone with government approval. Anyone.

The mining landscape has changed since 2009. Industrial operations, ASIC farms, and megawatt-scale facilities dominate the hashrate charts. But the protocol has not changed. The mathematics have not changed. Any valid hash, from any source, is accepted by the network without discrimination.

Open-source solo mining devices like the Bitaxe and NerdAxe are the modern expression of Satoshi’s original vision. They are mining rigs that anyone can build, inspect, and operate. They are tools of sovereignty in a world that increasingly demands compliance and intermediation.

When you plug in a Bitaxe and point it at a solo pool, you are not just mining Bitcoin. You are exercising a right that the protocol guarantees: the right to participate in consensus, to contribute proof-of-work, to be counted among the nodes that secure the network. No KYC. No minimum balance. No permission slip.

This is the cypherpunk’s miner. And it is available to everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Every Hash Counts

This is not a slogan. It is a technical statement.

Every SHA-256 hash computed by every miner on the planet contributes to Bitcoin’s cumulative proof-of-work. That proof-of-work is what makes Bitcoin’s ledger immutable, its transactions final, and its money sound. Without hashrate, there is no security. Without decentralized hashrate, there is no censorship resistance.

Your Bitaxe on your desk, hashing at 500 GH/s, is part of that security. Your Nerdminer on your shelf, hashing at 50 KH/s, is part of that security. They are small parts, yes. But they are independent parts. They answer to no pool operator, no corporation, no government. They hash because you chose to hash. They contribute because you chose to contribute.

Bitcoin does not need your hashrate to survive. But it needs people like you — people who care about decentralization enough to act on it, not just talk about it — to thrive. The network is stronger with more independent miners, not fewer. Every hash that comes from a sovereign miner, running open-source firmware, pointed at a solo pool, is a hash that cannot be co-opted, censored, or redirected.

We are D-Central Technologies. We are the Bitcoin Mining Hackers. We have been building, repairing, and hacking mining hardware since 2016 because we believe in what Bitcoin is building. We stock every Bitaxe variant, every NerdAxe, every accessory, and every tool you need to mine your own Bitcoin — because solo mining is not a product category for us. It is a conviction.

Plug it in. Point it at a solo pool. Let it hash.

Every hash counts.