Can a Bitaxe Really Find a Block?

January 11, 2024. A miner in the United States points a single Bitaxe Ultra at solo.ckpool. Roughly 0.5 TH/s of hashpower, against a Bitcoin network running ~500 EH/s. That’s one billion times less hashrate than the network. The probability of solving a Bitcoin block in any given day was, mathematically, around 1 in 27 million.

The Bitaxe found block #826562. The miner woke up to a 6.25 BTC coinbase. Worth $200,000 at the time.

It happened again in 2024. Then again. As of late 2025, multiple documented cases exist of Bitaxe-class devices finding Bitcoin blocks solo. Not millions. Not even dozens. But more than zero. And “more than zero” is the only number that matters when the question is “is it possible?”

So here’s the real question. Not “can a Bitaxe find a block?” — yes, it has, repeatedly. The real question is: under what conditions does it become a sensible thing to do, and which chain should you actually be hunting?

This is the gufo’s complete answer. Math, history, hardware, heat, hosting, and the truth about what to expect.

The history nobody mentions to first-time Bitaxe owners

Solo mining lore is full of long-shot wins. The most famous Bitaxe-class hits:

• March 2025 — Bitaxe Ultra (~0.48 TH/s, BM1366) finds Bitcoin block #887,212 via solo.ckpool. 3.125 BTC payout (~$260k post-halving). 619 million shares submitted before the winning hash. The miner ran the device on a desk, drawing about 15W of power.
• February 2024 — A different Bitaxe operator hits a BTC block. Different pool, different setup, similar shock.
• 2024-2025 — Multiple Bitaxe-class blocks documented across BCH, BC2, BCH2. Not all reported publicly; many miners stay quiet for opsec reasons.
• Ongoing — On smaller SHA-256 chains (BC2, BCH2), Bitaxe and NerdQAxe-class devices regularly find blocks. The math finally favors them.

The Bitcoin lottery wins are remarkable not because the math says they’re impossible — the math says they should happen, eventually, somewhere on the network — but because they happened on a single device that fits in a sandwich box. That’s the part that makes it culturally significant. Solo mining democratized the lottery, and Bitaxe is what democracy looks like in hardware form.

The Bitaxe family — what’s actually under the hood

The Bitaxe is open hardware. Schematics are public. Anyone can build one (and many do). The commercial models that matter:

The Gamma is the current sweet spot — same chip family as the industrial S21, packed onto a single-chip board. Efficiency under 17 J/TH is genuinely impressive at this scale. Power draw fits a USB-C PD adapter. Heat output is roughly equivalent to a desk lamp.

The NerdAxe / NerdQAxe / NerdOCTAxe extensions

NerdQAxe and NerdOCTAxe take the Bitaxe philosophy and multiply it. Same chips, but stacked:

SoloFury’s house test miner is currently a NerdOCTAxe pointed at BCH2 with a custom vardiff override of 25,000. It’s the gufo’s preferred development sandbox: low enough hashrate that it finds something interesting on a regular basis, high enough that variance doesn’t make it boring.

The math: real expected times by Bitaxe model and chain

The formula, one more time:

Mean time to block (days) ≈ network_hashrate ÷ your_hashrate ÷ 144

Network hashrates as of May 2026 (these change daily — verify on miningpoolstats.stream):

• BTC: ~750 EH/s = 750,000,000 TH/s
• BCH: ~4.5 EH/s = 4,500,000 TH/s
• XEC: ~80 PH/s = 80,000 TH/s
• BC2: ~300 TH/s (highly variable)
• BCH2: ~200 TH/s (highly variable)

Bitaxe Ultra (0.5 TH/s) — the entry point

Bitaxe Gamma (1.2 TH/s) — the workhorse

NerdQAxe+ (~5 TH/s) — the four-chip stack

NerdOCTAxe (~11 TH/s) — the desk monster

Read these tables once, then read them again. The math is unambiguous: Bitaxe-class hardware is built for the smaller chains. On BC2 and BCH2, even the smallest Bitaxe is statistically expected to find a block every few days. On BTC, you’re playing a lottery whose expected time exceeds human civilization. Both are valid. Both are solo mining. Just understand which one you signed up for.

The Bitcoin lottery — when it actually makes sense

If a Bitaxe Gamma’s mean time to a Bitcoin block is 12,000 years, why does anyone do it?

Three real reasons:

1. The asymmetric payoff. The Bitaxe costs ~$250 and ~$3-5/month in electricity. If it ever hits a BTC block, the payout is currently $300,000+ at 3.125 BTC. The expected value, even at 12,000-year odds, is positive — barely, but positive. You’re paying $36/year for a one-in-13,140 daily chance to hit ten thousand times your annual cost. That’s not gambling math. That’s lottery ticket math, and the expected value sits slightly above zero if you account for the long tail.
2. The decentralization argument. Every Bitaxe mining BTC adds a tiny amount of independent hashrate to the network. The network gets more decentralized when small miners participate. Some miners genuinely care about this and accept the bad odds as ideological cost.
3. It’s quietly fun. The dashboard. The hum. The “best share” climbing slowly. The non-zero chance, every ten minutes, that this is the one. Some people enjoy this the way others enjoy chess problems.

None of these are bad reasons. They’re just not profit-maximizing reasons. If your goal is to find blocks regularly, point your Bitaxe somewhere else.

The smaller chains — where the math actually rewards you

Here’s the part that doesn’t get enough attention: the same Bitaxe that has 12,000-year odds on Bitcoin has 1.7-day odds on BC2. That’s not a typo.

Same hardware. Same hashes per second. Same power draw. The only thing that changed is the network you pointed it at.

This is what makes BC2 and BCH2 special for the Bitaxe community. They’re SHA-256 chains with extremely low difficulty. The cryptographic puzzle is the same shape — every hash is just as likely to solve a block on BC2 as on BTC — but BC2’s network adjusts difficulty downward because nobody’s mining it at industrial scale. Your 1 TH/s isn’t competing against 750 EH/s. It’s competing against a few hundred TH/s, mostly other Bitaxe and rented hashrate.

You become a meaningful share of the network. And meaningful share of network = meaningful daily probability of a block.

The reward is smaller (50 BC2 ≈ $5-15 USD at current prices, depending on chain), but you’ll actually find blocks. Multiple per week. The thrill of solo mining without the metaphysical timeline.

Heat, power, and where to put the thing

A single Bitaxe puts out roughly the heat of a 17-watt incandescent bulb. You’ll feel it warm in your palm if you touch the heatsink, but it’s not a fire risk and it won’t heat a room. You can run it on:

• Bedside table: Yes, the fan is audible (about as loud as a quiet desktop computer). Some find it soothing. Some don’t.
• Office desk: Common. Fan whine is the usual complaint.
• Closet shelf: Make sure airflow exists. Don’t bury it under blankets.
• Garage / utility room: Best for noise sensitivity. Watch temperature in summer.

NerdQAxe (~75W) and NerdOCTAxe (~150W) put out genuine heat. Plan for ventilation. A NerdOCTAxe in a closed cabinet will cook itself. Open shelf, decent room temperature, fan facing outward — you’ll be fine.

Power costs

Approximate monthly cost at $0.15/kWh (US average):

• Bitaxe Ultra (15W): ~$1.65/month
• Bitaxe Gamma (17W): ~$1.85/month
• NerdQAxe+ (75W): ~$8.10/month
• NerdOCTAxe (150W): ~$16.20/month

For European miners on $0.30-0.40/kWh, double or triple these numbers. They’re still small. A NerdOCTAxe at $0.40/kWh costs about $43/month — still less than a streaming service subscription, with infinitely better drama.

Configuration: getting the most out of your Bitaxe

Voltage and frequency

The Bitaxe firmware (AxeOS) lets you tune voltage (mV) and frequency (MHz) from the web UI. Stock settings are conservative. The community generally pushes them harder:

Push too hard and you’ll see hardware errors (HW errors on the dashboard). Back off until errors are <1%. Watch chip temperature: under 65°C is comfortable, over 75°C is rolling the dice on chip lifespan.

Stratum URL & wallet setup for SoloFury

For a Bitaxe pointed at SoloFury, configure the AxeOS settings as:

Pool URL:     stratum+tcp://bch.solofury.com:7070   # for BCH
              stratum+tcp://bc2.solofury.com:8080   # for BC2 (recommended)
              stratum+tcp://bch2.solofury.com:8585  # for BCH2 (recommended)
              stratum+tcp://xec.solofury.com:9090   # for XEC
              stratum+tcp://btc.solofury.com:6060   # for BTC (lottery)

Username:     YOUR_WALLET_ADDRESS.bitaxe1
Password:     x

# For European miners, use eu- prefix for ~20-30ms latency:
              stratum+tcp://eu-bc2.solofury.com:8080
              stratum+tcp://eu-bch2.solofury.com:8585

Username format is critical: WALLET_ADDRESS.WORKER_NAME. The wallet address before the dot determines where the block reward goes if you find one. The worker name after the dot is just a label so you can identify which device hit it.

AsicBoost

Modern Bitaxe firmware supports AsicBoost (version-rolling). SoloFury’s stratum servers support it natively — no special configuration needed. Expect a ~10-15% efficiency improvement on the chips that have it enabled.

Variance — what to expect emotionally

Solo mining is a Poisson process. Even on BC2 with a 1.7-day mean expected time per block, the actual distribution looks like this:

• ~63% chance you find a block within 1.7 days
• ~86% chance you find one within 3.4 days (2× mean)
• ~95% chance you find one within 5.1 days (3× mean)
• ~5% chance you wait longer than 5 days
• ~1% chance you wait longer than 8 days

Translation: most weeks you’ll get one or two blocks on a Bitaxe Gamma pointed at BC2. Sometimes three. Sometimes none for a week and you’ll wonder if the device is broken. It’s not broken. It’s variance.

The trick is to internalize the math before you start, so the dry weeks don’t feel like failure. They’re not failure. They’re statistics.

What happens if you actually find a block?

Here’s what no one tells you. The Bitaxe dashboard will show “BLOCK FOUND!” The pool will record the solve. The coinbase transaction will arrive on-chain within ~10 minutes. You don’t have to do anything. The reward is sent to the wallet address you configured as your stratum username. No claim form, no payout request, no waiting.

Then you’ll spend the next hour staring at the block explorer, refreshing it, double-checking the address, calling friends. This is normal. It’s why people solo mine.

For psychological reasons, we recommend setting up your wallet on a hardware device (Ledger, Trezor) before you start mining. If you find a block to a hot wallet on your phone, you’ll spend the rest of the day in a panic about phone security. Easier to get this right upfront.

The honest gufo recommendation for Bitaxe owners

One Bitaxe Supra or Gamma: Point it at bc2.solofury.com:8080 or bch2.solofury.com:8585. Realistic odds, multiple blocks expected per month, low electric cost, real solo mining.

Multiple Bitaxe / a NerdQAxe / NerdOCTAxe: Same answer with more confidence. BC2/BCH2 primary, with a portion (10-20%) on XEC for variance.

You want the Bitcoin moonshot: Point one Bitaxe at btc.solofury.com:6060, accept that you’re playing a 12,000-year lottery, enjoy the ride. The math says it’s possible. History says it’s been done. Whether it’ll be done by you is what the dice will decide.

Either way, your Bitaxe is doing exactly what it was designed to do — independent solo mining at the consumer scale. Same per-hash probability as the industrial farms. Just fewer hashes. The chip doesn’t know it’s small. Don’t tell it.

The owl that hunts the small field eats more often than the owl that hunts the great forest. Match your eyes to the field. The dinner comes.