How a $500 Tiny Machine Outsmarted 960 Exahashes-You Won’t Believe This Mini Bitcoin Miracle!

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Pray, imagine the astonishment when Ocean Mining, that most respectable of institutions, proclaimed that a diminutive contrivance-an ASIC known as the Nerdminer-labouring humbly at a mere 5 terahashes per second, did serendipitously discover a block. Such an event, dear reader, would commonly demand a patience measured in millennia, exceeding even the span of 3,500 years!

A DATUM-Driven Infant Prodigy Shocks the Goliath Network by Defying 960 EH/s Probabilities

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-thus enabling the direct submission of blocks without the meddlesome intervention of any middleman, which one trusts nothing more than the least scandalous proxy in a ballroom full of gossips.

Announcing their marvel on the modern town square called X, Ocean Mining declared:

Block 913272 was discovered yesterday by a humble artisan miner: the gentleman known as @snednode disclosed his use of QAxe++, allied with Start9labs and DATUM upon OCEAN. To observe miners of all pedigrees asserting their claims by personally mining blocks, and to witness decentralization unfolding before one’s very eyes-is indeed the raison d’être of our endeavour.

A Nerdminer QAxe++ operates at about 4.8 terahashes per second, drawing a modest 72 to 76 watts from the ether. It shares its heart, the semiconductor, with the more illustrious Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro series, though the latter boasts a prodigious 229 TH/s advantage-practically a thoroughbred to our quaint pony.

QAxe++ miner revealing itself
The VP of Development and Engineering at Ocean Mining, with no small excitement, confirmed our miner’s QAxe++ identity.

When clustered in a pool, this modest hashrate could muster a profit of but $0.26 a day, its expenses dictated by the modest fee of 0.04 per kilowatt-hour. Yet, many pools are tyrannical in their minimum hash demands, as if to say, “Either present your riches or begone!” This forces our small miners to seek refuge in pools like Ocean and Solo CKPool, where the gates are hospitably open to all participants, regardless of their modest hashrate.

Still, to be honest, at very low hashrates-below 0.1 TH/s-the chances of block discovery are naught but a jest, akin to hunting a needle in the proverbial haystack whilst blindfolded.

Even at 5 TH/s, the venture is Herculean. To elucidate, the bitcoin network’s total might at the moment of block 913272’s discovery was a staggering 960 exahashes per second-which means our industrious Nerdminer’s toil represents a minuscule 0.0000000052% of that grand total. Considering the difficulty rate of 136.04 trillion, the aspiring miner must surmount approximately 5.84×1023 guesses.

Statistical odds of mining a block with 5 TH/s

At five trillion guesses per second-which sounds impressively rapid-the miner’s task would, on average, span 3,700 years. One might just as well quaff tea with Jane Austen and await the turn of the century before success. The odds of a block in a single year rest at one in 3,700. Per day, one must wager a dauntless bet of one in 1.35 million.

Yet, by some caprice of Fate-or perhaps an impish sense of humour-the infant ASIC did prevail and uncover the golden hash. Ergo, solo mining with such meagre hashrate might resemble playing the lottery with quantum dice, but sometimes the tiniest contender claims the jackpot! In this amusing episode, a modest initial outlay of $500 and the modest electric fare conspired to deliver a reward: 3.134 BTC, presently valued at a princely $347,968. How delightfully absurd!

This is no singular bout of good fortune. Earlier in July 2024, Solo CKPool’s own distinguished developer, known as Dr -ck, reported that a 3 TH/s Bitaxe, another infant miner, felicitously struck the pool’s 290th solo block. “Such minuscule hashrate,” he quipped, “would typically discover a block once every 3,500 YEARS- or, on a daily whim, a 1 in 1.2 MILLION possibility.” Ah, the delightful absurdity of laundry lists and improbabilities!

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2025-09-07 22:58