Bitcoin's Lottery Jackpot: Solo Home Miner Wins $200,000 With a $150 Mining Device

A hobbyist running a single Bitaxe device just won Bitcoin’s biggest lottery.

Key Takeaways

• A solo home miner claimed the full 3.1382 BTC reward from block #957382 via Public Pool on July 9, 2026.
• Bitaxe ran at 995.2 GH/s for eight hours before beating roughly 900 EH/s of network hashrate.
• Win adds to solo block wins tracked by Soloblocks.io and D-Central.tech since block 853,742 in 2024.

On July 9, 2026, at approximately 03:30 UTC, a solo miner using a palm-sized Bitaxe device mined block 957382 through Public Pool, claiming the full 3.1382 BTC block reward. That includes the 3.125 BTC subsidy plus roughly 0.0132 BTC in transaction fees, worth roughly $200,000 at the time.

The device ran at an average of 995.2 GH/s, close to its rated 1 TH/s, for about eight hours before submitting the winning share. That share carried a difficulty of 294.14 trillion, more than double the network target, which is what confirmed the block solve. Because the miner was the only worker on the address, the entire reward went to one person, with no pool fee taken.

The Odds Behind the Win

Bitcoin’s network hashrate sat at roughly 874 exahash per second (EH/s) at the time, with difficulty near 133.9 trillion. A miner running 1 terahash per second (TH/s) controls about one-eighty-seventh-millionth of the network’s total hashrate.

Visual perspective on the odds and timeline of winning a BTC block with a 1TH/s machine. Analysts estimate a device with that hashrate would need roughly 16,000 to 18,300 years on average to find a block. This miner found one in a single overnight eight-hour session.

That is the nature of bitcoin mining. Every hash has an equal shot at solving the current block, regardless of who owns it or how much hashrate they control. Someone wins every block. Most solo miners run for years without a payout. A small number hit the jackpot on their first attempt.

What a Bitaxe Actually Is

The Bitaxe is an open-source, single-chip bitcoin miner built around Bitmain’s BM1370 chip, the same silicon family used in some industrial Antminer S21 units. A Gamma-series Bitaxe ships with roughly 1.0 to 1.3 TH/s of stock hashrate, draws 15 to 21 watts, and typically sells for $60 to $150.

It connects over Wi-Fi, runs community-built AxeOS firmware, and displays live stats on a small screen. Hobbyists built the platform a few years ago as an educational tool rather than a profit machine. Its share of global hashrate is too small to guarantee steady payouts through a shared pool, which is exactly why solo mining exists.

How the Public Pool Made the Win Possible

In pooled mining, rewards are split among everyone contributing hashrate. Solo mining works differently. If a miner’s device finds the winning share, that miner keeps the entire block reward.

Image of Bitcoin block 957382 via mempool.space. Public Pool supports both modes and charges 0% fees on solo configurations, which has made it a common choice for Bitaxe owners. Miners connect through a Stratum address, use their own bitcoin address as the username, and watch the dashboard track hashrate and best difficulty share in real time.

This marks the second Public Pool solo win attributed to a single Bitaxe that the community has tracked in quite some time. Solo CKPool remains another major solo pool option, charging a small fee in exchange for a longer operating history. There’s also Braiins Solo, Parasite Pool, and Futurebit Solo among the list of solo pools available, each with different features and rules.

Roughly 42 days ago, Bitcoin.com News reported on a $300 machine, a Canaan Avalon Nano 3S with 6.68 TH/s of hashpower, discovering block height 951771. At the time, our newsdesk calculated that a Canaan Avalon Nano 3S, operating at just under 7 TH/s, has roughly a 6.72-in-a-billion chance of discovering any given Bitcoin block, or about one in 148,904,370.

Community Response

The win spread quickly on X under tags including #Bitaxe and #SoloMining. One widely shared post read, “Never let anyone convince you that you can’t mine a block!!!”

Image source: X Several sites that track solo block wins logged the event alongside prior Bitaxe victories.

What This Means for Home Miners

The expected value of solo mining at this scale remains tiny, often pennies a day in BTC terms. Consistent income still comes from pooled mining. What events like this show is that the door stays open. A device costing less than a mid-range smartphone, running on standard household power, can still claim the same reward as a warehouse full of industrial rigs. In that respect, solo mining closely resembles a lottery: the odds of winning are extraordinarily long, but someone eventually beats them.

For the operator behind block 957,382, a $150 piece of hardware and a $1 to $2 monthly electricity bill turned into a life-changing payout in under a day.