Can you win a Bitcoin block at home? One home Bitcoin miner did: they won a Bitcoin block from a desk. On May 30, 2026, a small Canaan Avalon Nano 3S, a box that costs about $300 and draws 140 watts, found block 951771 and kept the whole reward. 3.1404 BTC. Roughly $232,000 that evening. The odds against that block were about 149 million to one (Bitcoin.com News).
The story landed on r/CryptoCurrency and went around the mining world, because it answers a question every home miner has quietly asked: can a machine this small really win a Bitcoin block? The honest answer is yes, and almost never. This guide covers how it happened, what the odds look like for the machines we sell, and what it takes to put a ticket of your own in the draw.
Can you win a Bitcoin block at home? Yes. Solo mining pays the entire reward (3.125 BTC plus fees) to whoever finds the block, and home miners have done it several times in 2026. The odds are long for any one machine, about 1 in 2,800 a year for a 6.68 TH/s unit, but every draw is independent.
A desk-sized solo miner. Block 951771 paid 3.125 BTC plus about 0.0154 BTC in fees to one address through Braiins Solo.
Block 951771: 3.125 BTC subsidy plus about 0.0154 BTC in fees, paid to one address through Braiins Solo.
The block that started the conversation
The block landed at 8:27:23 p.m. Eastern on Saturday, May 30, through the Braiins Solo pool. At the Bitcoin price that day, about $73,800, the reward came to roughly $232,000: the 3.125 BTC subsidy the network pays whoever seals a block, plus about $1,137 in fees from the payments waiting inside it (block on mempool.space).
One detail matters, and we would rather you hear it from us than find it in the comments. The winner was not holding a single $300 box. Bitcoin.com reports a small fleet of fourteen machines, twelve Nano 3S units and two Avalon Mini 3, about 147 TH/s in total. The winning share was found by one of the Nano 3S units, but the household's combined odds on any block were closer to one in 6.7 million.
The win is still real, and the fleet is the useful part. More hashrate means more tickets, which is why people add machines instead of stopping at one.
How Solo Bitcoin Mining Works (and Why It Plays Like a Lottery)
A Bitcoin miner is a machine that guesses numbers very fast. The network sets a target. Every miner on earth guesses, trillions of times a second, and the first guess that lands under the target seals the next block and earns the reward. A new block appears about every ten minutes, which is 144 of them a day.
There are two ways to play. In a pool, thousands of machines combine their guessing and split every reward into small, steady payments. Solo mining is the other road. Your machine guesses alone, and when it lands one, the entire reward is yours. When it does not, you earn nothing. There is no middle.
A solo miner draws a fresh ticket every ten minutes, 144 times a day, for as long as it is plugged in.
A pool turns mining into a trickle. Solo mining turns it into a bitcoin lottery miner with an unusual property: the ticket never expires. You pay once for the machine, plug it in, and it enters every draw for as long as it runs. If you want the full comparison, we wrote it up in solo mining vs pool mining.
Solo Mining Odds: What Are the Real Chances to Win a Bitcoin Block?
Here is the part most advertising skips about solo mining odds. At the end of May the whole network was running at around 1,000 exahash per second, which is a billion terahash. A machine that contributes 6.68 terahash holds about one part in 150 million of that power. That share is its chance on every single block, and it is where the 149 million to one figure comes from (Bitcoin.com's report on the 149-million-to-one odds).
The Hammer Miner BC04 is in the same 6 TH/s class as the Nano 3S that found block 951771.
Per block, the odds look hopeless. Per year, with 144 draws a day, they stop being hopeless and become merely long. The table below shows what the machines in this story, and the ones we ship, look like on the same basis.
| Machine | Hashrate | Odds of a block in a year |
|---|---|---|
| Bitaxe Gamma (the July winner) | about 1 TH/s | about 1 in 19,000 |
| Avalon Nano 3S (this story) | 6.68 TH/s | about 1 in 2,800 |
| Hammer Miner BC04 | 6 TH/s | about 1 in 3,200 |
| Magic Miner 40T | 40 TH/s | about 1 in 475 |
Calculated at a network hashrate of about 1,000 EH/s and 144 blocks a day. Hashrate and difficulty move, and so do these numbers.
It keeps happening
If the Nano 3S were the only case, it would be a curiosity. It is not. Bitcoin.com counts roughly twenty to twenty-four solo home wins in the twelve months before this one. A few of the notable ones in 2026:
| Date | Machine | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 7, 2026 | NerdQaxe++ at about 4.8 TH/s, block 944078 | 3.132 BTC, about $224,000 (Bitcoin.com) |
| May 30, 2026 | Avalon Nano 3S at 6.68 TH/s, block 951771 | 3.1404 BTC, about $232,000 |
| Jul 9, 2026 | Bitaxe Gamma at about 1 TH/s, block 957382 | 3.1382 BTC, about $200,000 (Crypto Briefing) |
Look at the machines. Each one is a home bitcoin miner: a NerdQaxe, a Nano, a Bitaxe, hardware that fits on a bookshelf and plugs into a wall socket. None of these were mining farms. We covered the earlier wave in the top 5 recent lottery mining winners, and the new ones read the same way: someone with a small machine, a solo pool and a lot of patience.
Take the Bitaxe win. It was holding about a sixth of the hashrate the Nano 3S had, and it still found a block. With a fresh draw every ten minutes and no memory between draws, a small ticket can win.
Why this feels different from buying a lottery ticket
A scratch card is spent the moment you scratch it. A solo miner is not. It keeps drawing while you sleep. Every ten minutes the network rolls the dice again and your machine is in the room. When a block like 951771 turns up, you do not get your ticket money back. You get the whole prize, paid straight to your own wallet address.
People also do it for a quieter reason. The machine is yours. It sits on a desk, hums like a small fan, and the dashboard shows it working. You add hashrate to the network that secures Bitcoin, and one outcome in particular would change your year. If it never lands, you ran a quiet little solo Bitcoin mining rig for a few cents a day. Buy it with that outcome in mind and you will be fine.
How to Start Solo Bitcoin Mining at Home: 5 Steps
Setting up a solo miner takes about ten minutes, and you do not need to be technical.
- Pick a machine. More terahash means more tickets. The Hammer Miner BC04 is the same 6 TH/s class as the Nano 3S that won, at $239. The Magic Miner 40T is 40 TH/s for $799, roughly 6.7 times the tickets of the BC04 (batch 6, ships Nov 21).
- Get a Bitcoin wallet address. Any wallet you control. A win is paid straight to it.
- Plug it in and join Wi-Fi. The setup page walks you through it.
- Point it at a solo pool. Braiins Solo, CKPool Solo and Public Pool all pay the block reward straight to the finder, minus a small pool fee that varies. Enter your wallet address as the username.
- Leave it on. The odds improve with every hour it runs.
Running costs are small. The BC04 draws about 100 watts, around 40 cents a day at average US power rates. The Magic Miner 40T draws about 650 watts, closer to $2.50 a day, and the Thor X1 sips 25 watts. Know that number before you buy.
And if you ever get lucky, here is how to cash out your solo mining winnings. At that size, the tax and custody details are worth reading first.
Read this before you buy
- Solo mining pays a whole block or nothing.
- Most people who buy one of these will never find a block. The odds above are the real ones.
- The winner in this story ran a fleet of fourteen machines, not one.
- Electricity is a running cost, and Bitcoin difficulty and price both move.
- This is entertainment with an unusual jackpot, not an investment. Nothing here is financial advice.
FAQ: How to Win a Bitcoin Block at Home
Can a home miner really win a whole Bitcoin block?
Yes. Home miners have found full blocks several times in 2026 alone, including a 6.68 TH/s Avalon Nano 3S on May 30 and a roughly 1 TH/s Bitaxe Gamma on July 9. It is rare, and each win paid the entire reward to one address.
What are the odds of a solo miner finding a block?
Per block, a 6.68 TH/s machine has about a 1 in 150 million chance. Over a year of 144 draws a day, that works out to roughly 1 in 2,800. Higher hashrate improves the odds in direct proportion.
How much does it cost to try solo mining?
A small solo miner starts around $219 and uses between 25 and 100 watts, which is about 10 to 40 cents a day in electricity depending on the machine.
Is solo mining or pool mining better?
They are different bets. A pool pays a small steady amount that usually does not cover the machine's power cost at this size. Solo mining pays nothing most days and the full block reward if you hit. Most home buyers choose solo for the jackpot.
What happens if I win?
The reward goes straight to the wallet address you set up. After a block matures you can move it, hold it, or sell it, and there may be tax consequences where you live. We cover the steps in our solo mining cash-out guide.
Written by the HeliumDeploy team. We ship these machines and run them ourselves. For the news write-up of the same block, see A $300 home miner won a $232,000 Bitcoin block. Not financial advice.