Bitcoin lottery and solo miners

A lottery miner is a Bitcoin miner that mines solo instead of in a pool: it keeps the whole block reward if it ever finds a block, and earns nothing in between. The odds for a single home device are tiny, the electricity costs a few euros a month or less, and the setup takes minutes. This page collects the lottery and solo miners we stock, from the NerdMiner V4 to the NerdOctaxe Hydro, with hashrate and power draw from our catalogue, a running cost table, buying advice by budget and the matching setup guide for each device, for example the NerdMiner setup guide.

What a lottery miner is and how it wins

Bitcoin adds a new block roughly every ten minutes. Every miner on the network keeps guessing until one of them finds a hash below the current target, and that miner's block is the one that gets added. Each hash is one guess, so a device with more hashrate makes more guesses per second and holds a bigger share of the tickets in every round. A pool combines the guesses of many miners and pays everyone a small, steady share. A solo miner sends its guesses on its own, gets no steady share, and receives the full block reward, currently 3.125 BTC plus the transaction fees of that block, if one of its guesses wins.

"Lottery miner" and "solo miner" describe the same mode, not different hardware. The name lottery miner has stuck to the small devices, where the chance of a win per round is so small that the device is more a working piece of the Bitcoin network on your desk than a source of income. The larger boards on this page, up to the NerdOctaxe Rev 3.1 and the NerdOctaxe Hydro, hold a measurably bigger share of the tickets, but the principle is the same. All of them can also mine in a pool: solo or pool is a setting in the miner's web interface, and you can switch at any time.

How to judge your odds honestly

Your chance of winning any given block is your hashrate divided by the hashrate of the whole network. The network hashrate changes every day; a block explorer shows the current value. The expected time until a block is the network hashrate divided by your hashrate, times ten minutes. We do not print fixed probabilities on this page because they would be out of date within weeks. What the formula does tell you is how the devices compare with each other: the Bitaxe Gamma at 1.3 TH/s holds about 5 million times as many tickets per round as the NerdMiner V4 at 250 KH/s, and the NerdOctaxe Hydro at 14 TH/s holds roughly eleven times as many as the Gamma.

All lottery and solo miners we stock

The table lists every miner in our catalogue with the hashrate, power draw and efficiency published on its product page, sorted by hashrate. The product cards below the text and the miner comparison show current prices and availability, which change more often than this page.

Noise: only two models carry a measured noise level in their data sheet, the NerdQX with 38 dB and the Avalon Nano 3s with 33 dB in quiet mode and 38 dB in normal mode. The NerdQAxe++ Hydro and the NerdOctaxe Hydro move their heat into a closed water loop with a radiator. For the other models we publish no noise figure, because we have not measured one.

Which one to pick

Prices are on the product cards below and change with our purchasing, so this guide sorts by what you want from the device rather than by a fixed price.

• Smallest budget, first contact with mining: the NerdMiner V4. It hashes at 250 KH/s on an ESP32 microcontroller, draws 1 W and shows the mining process on a colour display. It is the device to learn with, to give away and to leave running on a desk without noticing the power bill.
• First real ASIC miner at low power: the Bitaxe Gamma (1.3 TH/s, 17 W, 13 J/TH) or the NerdAxe Gamma (1.2 TH/s, 17 W) with its larger colour display. Both run a single BM1370 chip and are the usual entry into solo mining with a real share of the tickets in every round.
• Best efficiency: the NerdAxe Gaia. 2.6 TH/s from 25 W is 10 J/TH, the lowest figure of every miner we sell. If your electricity price is what worries you, this is the one.
• Most hashrate on a desk: the NerdQAxe++ with four BM1370 chips, 4.8 TH/s at 70 W.
• Most hashrate overall: the NerdOctaxe Rev 3.1 with 12 TH/s at 200 W is the strongest air-cooled miner we sell; the NerdOctaxe Hydro reaches 14 TH/s at 220 W with a closed water loop.
• Quietest with a measured value: the Avalon Nano 3s with 33 dB in quiet mode, followed by the NerdQX with 38 dB and its tower cooler.

All models side by side, with price and availability, are in the miner comparison.

What it costs to run

Electricity is the only running cost. Watts times 720 hours a month, divided by 1,000, gives the kilowatt hours; multiply by your tariff. The table uses 0.20, 0.30 and 0.40 EUR per kWh, which covers most household tariffs in the EU.

A miner turns all of that electricity into heat. A NerdMiner V4 at 1 W is not noticeable; a NerdOctaxe Rev 3.1 releases its 200 W into the room, which some owners welcome in winter and others plan around with airflow. Which miner works as a heater in which room is on our Bitcoin heater page.

Setup in five minutes

Every miner on this page connects to a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network and is configured in a browser, with no software to install. You enter your Wi-Fi, a Bitcoin address that belongs to you and the address of the pool you want to mine on, then the device starts hashing. For solo mining you point the miner at a solo pool that pays the whole block to your address; how that works, and what your odds and running costs are, is explained in the solo Bitcoin mining guide.

• NerdMiner setup guide for the NerdMiner V4
• Bitaxe setup guide for Gamma, Gamma Performance, Performance Stage 2, Gamma Copper Pro, 801 and 702
• NerdAxe setup guide for the NerdAxe Gamma, the NerdAxe Gaia and the NerdAxe Gaia Copper Pro
• NerdQAxe++ setup guide for NerdQAxe++, NerdQAxe++ Hydro, NerdQAxe Copper Pro, NerdQX and both NerdOctaxe models

Buying in the EU

Every price in the shop includes VAT, and orders ship from our warehouse in the EU with tracking. Inside the EU there are no customs charges and delivery takes 2 to 5 working days. For Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, your customs authority charges import duty and local VAT. Zones, costs and times are on the shipping page.

You have 14 days from delivery to withdraw from your purchase without giving a reason; the details and the form are on the withdrawal page.