Somewhere out there, a hobbyist plugged a device roughly the size of a coffee mug into their wall, connected it to the internet, and won the Bitcoin mining equivalent of Powerball. Using a Bitaxe ASIC miner that retails for around $250, a solo miner successfully found a complete Bitcoin block around July 12, 2026, earning the full 3.125 BTC subsidy plus transaction fees.
The expected wait time for a device like this to mine a block? Approximately 18,000 years.
The math that makes this absurd
The Bitaxe is a compact, open-source ASIC miner that hums along at roughly 1 to 1.2 terahashes per second. It draws between 15 and 25 watts of power, which is less than a light bulb.
To put the odds in sharper relief: a similar setup running at 6 TH/s, which is already several times more powerful than the winning device, would have daily odds of approximately 1 in 180 million. The miner that actually hit the block was working with even less firepower.
