Every state lottery on earth works the same way. The operator skims half your money before the draw even happens. The draw itself runs behind closed doors, operated by the same people who profit from it. If you win, you're paid in a currency that buys less every year. And in most countries, your name goes public the moment you collect.
There is a different draw. It runs every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No operator. No skim. No bank. No ID check. The full prize settles instantly to a digital wallet.
A tiny machine can enter every draw for you automatically. It guesses a trillion times per second. By the time each 10-minute draw ends, it has made 600 trillion attempts. On less electricity than a light bulb. It never stops. It never sleeps. It never asks you to buy another ticket.
The network is called Bitcoin. The process is called solo mining. It's open, it's global, and it's been running nonstop for over 16 years. You just never heard of it.
Watch what happens to a single lottery ticket the moment you buy it. Your $2 doesn't go into a prize pool. It gets carved up. The operator takes the biggest slice before the draw even starts. The tax authority stands behind them, waiting for their cut if you win. What's left over, the part that's actually playing for you, is roughly fifteen cents on the dollar. You never had a shot at the full prize. That was never the design.
Gone before the draw even happens. The lottery keeps half your money as revenue.
The government stands behind the operator, waiting. Win, and they take another 30-50% depending on your country.
This is the only part actually playing for you. Fifteen cents of every dollar.
Same dollar. Three very different outcomes. The structure decides what you keep.
The operator takes their cut before the draw. The tax authority takes theirs after. Here's what percentage of the headline prize actually reaches your hands.
So they take half your money before the draw. But suppose you beat the odds anyway. Suppose you win. Here's your reward: your full name, your city, and your photo go public. In most US states, this is the law. In developing countries, it is effectively a ransom note.
Winners' identities published. In a country where kidnapping-for-ransom is a documented industry, winning a public lottery paints a target on you and your family.
Mega-Sena winners publicly identified. Documented cases of lottery winners targeted within days of announcement in one of the world's highest violent crime countries.
State lottery winners published by name. Extortion by local officials, extended family pressure, and criminal targeting of identified winners are widely reported.
Lotto winners' names published nationally. Public identification of sudden wealth creates immediate physical danger in a country with high poverty and crime.
Half taken before the draw. Another third taken if you win. Your name published. Your prize shrinking every year. That's the game 200 million Americans play every week.
What if the draw ran on code anyone could read? What if no operator touched the money? What if the prize settled in seconds, to a wallet only you control, anywhere on earth? That system exists. It has been running every 10 minutes since January 3, 2009.
Think of a state lottery like a raffle at a school fundraiser. You buy one ticket for $2. Someone draws a winner on Saturday night. If your number isn't called, your ticket goes in the trash.
Now imagine a different kind of raffle. Instead of buying a ticket, you buy a little machine that prints its own entries. One every fraction of a second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The machine costs less than a few weeks of lottery tickets. It burns less electricity than a light bulb. And the raffle doesn't happen once a week. It happens every 10 minutes.
That's solo mining. You buy the machine once. It enters every single draw, forever, automatically. No one checks your ID. No one takes a cut. And if you win, the full prize goes straight to you.
A tiny miner called a Bitaxe. Size of a deck of cards. Plug it into power and Wi-Fi. Burns less electricity than a light bulb. That's the entire setup.
Your device starts guessing numbers. A trillion per second. Every 10 minutes, the network picks a winning number. If your device guessed it, you win.
The full block reward, paid in Bitcoin. No split. No deductions. No ID check. No waiting period. Straight to your wallet.
No ticket to throw away. Your machine is already guessing for the next draw. It never stops, never sleeps, never needs you to buy another entry.
We took the world's biggest lotteries and put them next to a tiny hobby miner. Read across each row.
Not most. Every single one.
Data from Powerball.com, MegaMillions.com, and EuroMillions.com. Mining odds based on one small hobby device at current network difficulty.
Every lottery on earth requires you to trust an operator: a small group of humans who control the draw, the payout, and the rules. Even the most regulated lottery in the world was compromised from the inside.
The lottery's own security director manipulated the random number generator to predict winning numbers across multiple states for years. The person hired to protect the integrity of the draw was the one rigging it. The most regulated, most audited lottery system in the world had a single insider compromise the entire operation. Convicted on multiple fraud charges across multiple states.
Nigeria: Operators accused of delayed and denied payouts with no verification. Brazil: Mega-Sena insider access investigations. India: Fake operations, rigged draws, counterfeit tickets across states. Thailand: Government lottery scalped at 2-3x face value by organized networks. China: $30B+ in lottery fund embezzlement across provinces. Where transparency is lowest, fraud is highest.
The pattern: every lottery depends on trusting an operator. A small number of humans control the draw, the payout, and the rules. Bitcoin mining eliminates the operator entirely. The "draw" is a cryptographic function distributed across hundreds of thousands of independent computers. No backdoor exists to exploit.
Say you win $1 million in the Powerball tonight. You already know about the operator's cut. But it doesn't stop there. The IRS takes 37%. Your state takes another 5-10%. Of your million-dollar headline, you're holding about $330,000.
And that $330,000? It buys a little less next year. And the year after that. And every year for the rest of your life. That's not bad luck. It's how the dollar is designed to work. The Federal Reserve targets 2-3% inflation per year, on purpose. Your prize is melting from the day you receive it.
Now say your miner hits a block. The full reward lands in your wallet within minutes. No operator took a percentage. No name published. No cameras, no press conference, no "winners' gallery." You decide when to sell, if ever, which means you decide when taxes apply. And the asset itself? It's not sitting in a currency designed to lose value. Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million coins. No central bank can print more. No government can change the schedule. Your prize doesn't melt. It's the only major asset on earth with a supply that is mathematically guaranteed to never increase.
Designed to lose purchasing power. 2-3% every year in developed countries. In Nigeria, Argentina, or Turkey, far faster. Your prize is a block of ice: impressive the day you get it, smaller every day after.
At 3% annual inflation
Fixed supply: 21 million coins, forever. No central bank can print more. No government can change the schedule. Like land on an island that can never get bigger. More people want in, each piece is worth more.
Historical average
One prize melts from the day you receive it. The other is the hardest money ever created.
No account to create. No identity to verify. No app to download. No subscription. Do this once and you never need to think about it again.
Order a tiny, pre-built miner online. It's the size of a deck of cards. Ships to your door like anything else you'd buy on the internet.
Give it power. Connect it to your home Wi-Fi. The setup screen takes about two minutes. If you've ever connected a smart speaker, you can do this.
Tell the machine where to send Bitcoin if it wins. Paste in a wallet address. Hit save. That's it. The machine plays every draw from here. Every 10 minutes. Every hour. Every day. While you sleep, while you work, while you're not thinking about it at all. You just placed a bet that never expires.
One machine. That's the whole play. Solo mining is a long-odds game. So is every lottery you've ever played. The difference is structure. No one takes a cut. No one publishes your name. No ticket expires. And the prize doesn't melt in your hands. We measured 21 dimensions. Mining won every single one. You don't need ten machines. You don't need to check it every day. You don't need to "upgrade your strategy." One device, running quietly, entering every draw on earth. That's the most rational long-odds bet that exists. Set it up. Then go live your life. Run the numbers yourself and see the practical costs.
Enter your hashrate and electricity cost. See your probability in plain English.
The full technical explanation. Hashes, difficulty, randomness. For the curious.
Electricity, hardware, variance, and scam avoidance.
The mechanism behind the numbers. No jargon walls, no assumed knowledge.
In one sentence: Computers compete to solve a math puzzle roughly every 10 minutes. The first to find a valid solution wins newly created bitcoin. Solo mining means you enter alone, with your own hardware. The rules are public, identical for everyone, and enforced by math.
When someone sends bitcoin, the transaction waits in a queue called the mempool. Roughly every 10 minutes, a miner bundles a batch of waiting transactions into a block: a page in a ledger. Each page is sealed with a mathematical stamp and added to all previous pages.
That growing stack of sealed pages is a blockchain. Each block references the one before it, creating a sequence that is extremely difficult to alter. Without blocks, there would be no agreed-upon order of transactions.
No central authority decides which transactions go into a block. The miner who wins that round makes the selection from the public queue.
A hash function takes any input and produces a fixed-length output that looks random. The same input always produces the same output. Even a tiny change produces a completely different output.
Think of a meat grinder. You can turn a steak into ground beef, but you cannot reverse the process. The output is always the same size regardless of how much you put in.
Miners take a block of transaction data, add a guess to it, and run it through the hash function. If the output meets the condition, they win. If not, they change the guess and try again. A trillion times per second for even a small hobby device.
The critical point: anyone on the network can confirm a winning solution in a fraction of a second. The winner had to do enormous work to find it, but proof-checking is nearly free. This asymmetry is what makes it impossible for any operator to rig the outcome.
Miners are trying to produce an output that falls below a specific number called the target. The lower the target, the harder it is.
Imagine rolling a 1,000-sided die and needing to roll under 3. Now imagine the target changes to under 1. Same die, harder win condition. This is what the Bitcoin network does: it adjusts the target to control difficulty.
No one controls the difficulty. It adjusts automatically based on how fast blocks are being found. No operator is turning a dial.
The network adjusts difficulty every 2,016 blocks (roughly two weeks). If blocks have arrived too fast, difficulty increases. If too slow, it decreases. The goal: keep average block time at approximately 10 minutes.
This self-regulation is one of the core differences from a lottery. A lottery operator can change the rules, odds, prize structure, or draw frequency. The Bitcoin network adjusts difficulty by formula, and every participant can verify the calculation.
If mining outcomes were predictable, whoever had the most power could control which transactions get confirmed. Randomness ensures even a small miner has some chance.
Each guess is independent. Past failures do not bring you closer to success. Your 10 billionth guess has exactly the same odds as your first. The process is memoryless.
Lotteries rely on trust: one compromised insider can rig the entire draw (and has). Bitcoin's randomness is cryptographic, distributed across hundreds of thousands of independent machines, and publicly verifiable. No individual has a backdoor.
Not "printing money from nothing": Miners spend real resources. The block reward is compensation for securing the network.
Not hacking: Miners do brute-force trial and error within the rules. Like guessing a combination lock by trying every possibility, not picking it.
Not a voting mechanism: Miners follow rules enforced by node software. If a miner produces an invalid block, the network rejects it automatically.
Not anonymous: Every transaction is recorded on a public ledger. The accurate term is "pseudonymous." Your name is not attached to your address, but the record is public.
Now that you understand the mechanism, see what it means for your specific situation.
Open the Odds Calculator →Enter your numbers. Get your probability, expected cost, and what it means in plain English.
Network difficulty and hashrate change constantly. This assumes a fixed snapshot for planning purposes. The comparison table above uses a conservative 1 TH/s baseline; adjust hashrate here to match your actual hardware.
Each entry costs 8,000x less than a Powerball ticket. Your annual odds are about 1 in 11,416, which is 164x better than Powerball's (1 in 1,873,000).
Real numbers so you can plan effectively. No surprises.
Solo mining has real costs: electricity, hardware, physical space, and time. At hobby scale, electricity costs are low. At larger scales, the costs become significant and require careful planning.
Electricity is the ongoing cost. As long as your hardware is running, your meter is turning.
| Scale | Power | $0.06/kWh | $0.12/kWh | $0.20/kWh |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobby (Bitaxe) | 15 W | $7.88 | $15.77 | $26.28 |
| Mid-scale | 3,000 W | $1,576.80 | $3,153.60 | $5,256.00 |
| Serious | 30,000 W | $15,768 | $31,536 | $52,560 |
A 15-watt Bitaxe-style device costs roughly $8-16 per year at typical residential rates ($0.06-$0.12/kWh). At expensive rates ($0.20+), it can reach $26. Unlike a lottery ticket, the hardware is still there after the draw.
A single Bitaxe at ~15 watts is barely noticeable: comparable to a USB charger in heat and quieter than a desk fan. Larger hardware at 3,000 watts produces heat like a large space heater and noise in the 70-80 decibel range, running 24/7. Dedicated space required.
ASIC technology improves over time, so older hardware becomes less competitive. Plan for 3-5 years of useful life. Unlike a lottery ticket (zero value after the draw), mining hardware retains partial resale value. Fans fail first (1-2 years), followed by power supplies. Budget for replacements.
Variance is the gap between "on average" and what actually happens to you. At 1 TH/s, your annual odds are roughly 1 in 11,400. Imagine a coin that lands on heads once every 11,000 flips. You could flip it 50,000 times and still never see heads. That is hobby-scale solo mining.
Long periods without a win are normal, not a malfunction. The difference from a lottery: your participation is continuous and compounds over time. A Powerball ticket expires after one draw. Your miner participates in every single block, 52,560 times per year.
Guarantees a specific daily or monthly return in dollar terms
You cannot independently verify your hardware exists or is running
Fee structure is not fully disclosed before you pay
No verifiable physical address or named team
"Limited time" pricing pressure
Hardware price significantly below established distributors
Discourages you from running your own node
If you encounter two or more of these, walk away. The beauty of solo mining is that it requires trusting no one.
A 15-watt hobby device draws about the same as a phone charger. The environmental footprint of hobby-scale mining is negligible by any standard. At larger scales, miners have a direct incentive to find the cheapest energy possible, which increasingly means renewable or stranded energy.
Mining regulations vary by country. Most jurisdictions that have engaged with mining have moved toward regulation rather than prohibition. Check your local rules before purchasing hardware.
Every serious criticism gets a serious, evidence-based response.
See Myths Addressed →The strongest versions of the most common criticisms, addressed directly.
Two clear paths: learn without spending, or set up hobby-scale mining.
Get Started →Two paths: learn without spending money, or set up hobby-scale solo mining.
You can learn everything without buying hardware.
Enter hypothetical numbers and see the math. Try the three pre-built scenarios. Costs nothing, teaches more than most YouTube videos about mining.
Download and verify the entire Bitcoin transaction history on spare hardware. Requires 2 GB RAM, 600+ GB storage, reliable internet. An old laptop works. This does not mine bitcoin; it validates the rules.
Browse every block ever mined, see every transaction, verify network statistics in real time. This is the public ledger in action.
The whitepaper is 9 pages long and readable by non-specialists. The source code is open. Knowing the rules are publicly verifiable is valuable.
Track hashrate, difficulty adjustments, and block times over weeks. See the self-adjusting mechanism in action. Costs nothing, builds intuition.
Enter your proposed hashrate and actual electricity cost. If the electricity budget exceeds comfortable hobby spending, adjust your target.
Decide on a maximum total spend: hardware, electricity, and infrastructure. Write it down before you buy. This is hobby money, not investment capital.
Verify your local situation around cryptocurrency activity, electricity rates, and noise/electrical rules.
Self-custody recommended. Write down your backup phrase, store it securely, and test that you can restore from it before sending any value to it.
Your node decides whether a block you mine is valid. Running your own removes the need to trust any third party. 2 GB RAM, 600+ GB SSD, broadband.
Criteria: efficiency (J/TH, lower is better), noise level, heat output, seller credibility, and price within your budget.
Connects your hardware to the network via your node. Configure for solo mining (not pool). Evaluate: hardware compatibility, active maintenance, open-source.
Write down when you will stop mining BEFORE plugging in: max monthly cost, total budget exceeded, hardware failure threshold, unacceptable noise/heat. Prevents emotional decisions.
| If you... | Leans toward |
|---|---|
| Are comfortable with long waits between payouts | Solo |
| Prefer small, frequent payouts | Pool |
| Have hashrate below 100 TH/s | Solo for the lottery experience; Pool for steady income |
| Want to learn through pure experimentation | Solo |
| Want full self-sovereignty, zero trust | Solo |
| Want the simplest possible setup | Pool |
| Love the "lottery ticket" aspect | Solo |
Quick answers and term definitions. Everything in one place.
Every assumption disclosed. Every formula explained. Verifiable by anyone.
Every calculation rests on stated assumptions: fixed difficulty, 100% uptime, fixed electricity rate, fixed network hashrate, Poisson approximation for probability, no Bitcoin price forecast, no transaction fee variance modeled, no software overhead modeled.
Powerball figures sourced from publicly available lottery authority data. Powerball draws 3 times per week (156/year). Example $100M jackpot is illustrative. Lump-sum discount ~60%. Federal tax 37%, state 5-10%. Bitaxe at 1 TH/s with ~15W is a representative hobby device. Network hashrate of 600 EH/s is a reference figure.
The Poisson distribution: a standard model for rare, random events.
P(at least 1 block) = 1 - e-λ
λ = (your_TH/s / (network_EH/s × 1,000,000)) × 144 × days
Mean time = 1 / (your_share × 144) days
Median time = mean × ln(2)
Each hash attempt has an extremely small probability of success. Each attempt is independent. Total attempts are enormous. These conditions match the Poisson model precisely.
This site exists because lottery players rarely see an honest, side-by-side comparison of what they actually spend, their real odds, their take-home after taxes and deductions, and what alternatives exist with fully transparent, publicly auditable rules.
This site is free. It sells nothing: no miners, no services, no affiliate links.