Nerdminer V2 and the Block Chance on Bitcoin — Your real chances at 190,000+ €

The Nerdminer V2 is often described as a "bitcoin lottery ticket", and that is about right. For roughly €50 up front and a few euros of electricity a year you take part in a permanent lottery where the jackpot is 3.125 BTC, around €195,000 at the current price. The draw does not happen once a week but every 10 minutes. The chance per device is astronomically small, but it is real, and surprise solo finds by hobby hardware are documented. This article works through your odds, compares them with real lotteries, and explains why the Nerdminer lottery is in its own way nicer than a national draw.

The maths, what are your odds?

With a Nerdminer V2 at 250 kH/s and a bitcoin network hash rate of 620 EH/s, the probability of finding the next block on any given attempt (every 10 minutes) is:

P(block) = 250,000 / 620,000,000,000,000,000,000 = 4.03 × 10⁻¹⁶

That is 0.0000000000000403 % per block. There are 144 blocks a day, so 52,560 a year. The probability of finding at least one block within a year:

P(at least 1 block/year) = 1 − (1 − 4.03 × 10⁻¹⁶)^52,560 ≈ 2.12 × 10⁻¹¹

In words: roughly 1 in 47 billion per year. Small? Yes. But the stake is close to nothing, and the draw runs every ten minutes.

Compared with real lotteries

At first glance the Nerdminer looks hopeless: 1 in 47 billion against 1 in 140 million for the national lottery. But three differences make the comparison fairer, and they favour the Nerdminer:

1. Cost per draw

A lottery line costs €1.20 per draw, twice a week, so €124.80 a year. The Nerdminer costs about €2.66 of electricity a year for 52,560 draws. Cost per draw: about 0.005 cents against €1.20. Per individual attempt the Nerdminer is roughly 24,000 times cheaper.

2. Expected value

Expected value, the mathematical average return per euro staked, is negative for the Nerdminer and the lottery alike. But:

• Lotto 6 out of 49: EV ≈ −50 % (of €1.20, about €0.60 goes back out as prizes).
• Nerdminer V2: the "stake" is so small that the low running cost makes it close to neutral. You lose almost nothing in real terms while staying in the game.

3. Expiry against permanence

A lottery ticket is worthless once the draw is over. Your Nerdminer V2 keeps running 24/7/365. It takes part in every single block, without you doing anything. This lottery has no expiry date.

Documented solo finds by hobby hardware

Solo mining with small hardware is not a thought experiment. The bitcoin community has repeatedly documented cases where individuals with devices in the GH/s to TH/s range found a complete block and collected the full reward. That is exactly the hash rate class our NerdNOS ASIC plays in.

• Solo find at ~654 GH/s: through the solo pool solo.ckpool a single small miner at only about 654 GH/s found a block, with a reward worth more than $200,000 at the time. That is hobby hardware, not a data centre.
• Antminer S9 class (~13–17 TH/s): home setups running a single older ASIC unit have repeatedly solved a block out of nowhere and taken home a full reward overnight.
• BitAxe and NerdQaxe class via public-pool.io: modern tiny ASICs from precisely the class the NerdNOS belongs to have demonstrably found blocks through public solo pools.

Statistically such hits should only happen every few thousand years per device. That they nonetheless occur regularly comes down to the sheer number of solo miners running in parallel worldwide: the more people play, the more often somebody wins. The Nerdminer V2 at 250 kH/s sits below that GH/s to TH/s class; the documented finds come from the stronger end, where the NerdNOS plays.

Why the Nerdminer lottery works emotionally

In behavioural terms the Nerdminer lottery is built more kindly than any state lottery:

• No sunk-cost pressure: the cost (about €50 once plus a few euros of electricity) is low enough that no urge builds to "win back what I put in".
• Permanent entry, no effort: no weekly ticket, no kiosk, no app. The miner just runs.
• Live feedback: the OLED display shows you in real time that your miner is working — hash rate, shares, block height. Psychologically far more satisfying than a silent paper ticket.
• A shared moment: when a solo miner somewhere in the world finds a block, the whole community celebrates. You are part of a global group of players.
• Something to show for it: even if you never win, you have a good-looking gadget on your desk and you genuinely understand bitcoin mining. After a lottery draw you have: nothing.

How to improve your odds

The block chance hangs on exactly one lever: hash rate. More attempts per unit of time means a better chance. How to get it:

• Keep the firmware current. A clean firmware update gets the full 250 kH/s out of the ESP32. Free. Firmware update guide.
• Add a second Nerdminer. 2× 250 kH/s is twice the chance. Costs about €50 plus a few euros of electricity a year.
• Move up to the NerdNOS ASIC. This is by far the biggest lever: the NerdNOS is a real BM1397 ASIC at around 100 GH/s (up to ~400 GH/s) for €99, plug and play. That is roughly 400,000× the hash rate of the V2, so roughly 400,000× the block chance. No firmware fork, no tinkering: plug in, enter your BTC address, done. This is exactly the class of device that has already found real blocks.
• Let it run 24/7. Every hour offline is an hour without a draw. Stable Wi-Fi and constant power are the foundation.

The psychology of "maybe today"

What makes the Nerdminer lottery interesting: you know the chance is tiny, and you also know it is real. There have been winners on hobby hardware. That creates a steady, quiet "maybe today" without the financial and emotional stress of real gambling. The stakes are so low that nobody can ruin themselves on it.

Behavioural psychology calls this the longshot bias, the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of very improbable events. With a Nerdminer it is harmless, because the stake is close to zero. At the roulette table or in day trading the same bias is ruinous.

Common questions about the bitcoin lottery