What Is Solo Bitcoin Mining — And Is It Worth It?

Every Bitcoin miner eventually asks the same question: should I mine in a pool, or go solo? The answer depends entirely on your hashrate, your risk tolerance, and whether you actually understand what you're signing up for. This guide explains both approaches honestly — including the parts that solo mining advocates tend to gloss over.

How Bitcoin Mining Works (The Quick Version)

Bitcoin miners compete to find a hash — a number — that falls below a target set by the network. The process is essentially a lottery: you generate billions of random guesses per second (that's what your hashrate measures), and occasionally one of those guesses wins. The winner gets to add the next block to the blockchain and collects the block reward — currently 3.125 BTC after the April 2024 halving — plus any transaction fees in that block.

The network adjusts the difficulty of this lottery every 2,016 blocks (roughly every two weeks) to keep the average block time at 10 minutes regardless of how much total hashrate is competing. As of early 2025, the total network hashrate is around 800–850 exahashes per second (EH/s).

Pool Mining vs. Solo Mining

The key insight: the expected value is essentially the same. Whether you pool mine or solo mine, the long-run BTC you earn per unit of hashrate is approximately equal (minus pool fees). The difference is entirely about variance — how smooth or lumpy your earnings are.

The Lottery Math — What Are Your Actual Odds?

This is where solo mining gets brutally honest. Let's calculate the expected time to find a block for a single Antminer S21 Pro at 234 TH/s against a network running at 800 EH/s.

Your share of the network hashrate: 234 TH/s ÷ 800,000,000 TH/s = 0.0000293%

At 6 blocks per hour (144 per day), your expected time to find one block:

That's not a typo. A single S21 Pro solo mining against today's network would statistically take 65 years to find a block. You might get lucky and find one in a week — or go 130 years without one. That's what variance means at low hashrates.

To get your expected time down to a more reasonable range, you need serious hashrate. At 10 PH/s (roughly 43 S21 Pros), the expected time drops to about 550 days. At 100 PH/s, you're looking at ~55 days on average. Still high variance, but starting to become a real strategy.

When Solo Mining Actually Makes Sense

Solo mining isn't irrational — it's just a specific bet. Here are the cases where it genuinely makes sense:

• You have significant hashrate. If you're running multiple petahashes, the variance becomes manageable enough that solo mining is a legitimate strategy. Below a few petahashes, you're playing a very long lottery.
• You're playing for the jackpot. Some miners specifically want the all-or-nothing nature of solo mining. Finding a block at 3.125 BTC (currently worth ~$260,000+) is a life-changing event for a small operation. Some people find that exciting and are willing to accept lower expected utility for higher potential upside.
• You have a very long time horizon. If you plan to mine for 10+ years and don't need the income, the variance matters less over long time periods.
• You're philosophically opposed to pools. Large mining pools represent a centralization risk to Bitcoin. Some miners solo mine as a matter of principle, accepting lower expected income to support network decentralization.

What Is a Solo Pool?

A solo pool is a middle-ground infrastructure: you connect your miner to a pool's stratum server (just like regular pool mining), but instead of sharing block rewards with other miners, you keep the entire reward if your submitted share is the winning block. The pool provides the infrastructure — block templates, a node connection, job distribution — and typically charges a small fee (1% or less) for this service.

The advantage over truly solo mining yourself is that you don't need to run your own Bitcoin node, manage your own stratum server, or handle the technical overhead. The variance is identical — you're still waiting on the same lottery — but the setup is turnkey.

This is exactly what Faith Mining Solo Pool is being built to provide: a transparent, honest solo pool for operators who understand the math and want to play the long game.

The Bottom Line

Solo mining is not for everyone, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. If you have less than a few petahashes of hashrate and need your mining income to cover electricity or hardware costs, pool mine. The steady, predictable income is worth the 1–2% fee.

If you have significant hashrate, a long time horizon, and genuinely understand that you might not find a block for years — solo mining is a legitimate and exciting strategy. Just go in with eyes open.