How long does it take a lone miner to produce a single Bitcoin? In a pool, how about mining?
Like the answer to most mining questions, the answer to the question: ‘How long does it take to mine one bitcoin?’ is … it depends on many factors. We’ll look at a few various circumstances.
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How Long Does It Take for a Solo Miner to Miner 1 Bitcoin?
It takes 10 minutes for the Bitcoin network to discover a block, and each block yields 6.25 BTC reward for the miner that discovers it.
The reward will, however, only go to the miner who finds the block in question. The chances of discovering a block are extremely slim due to the large number of miners.
Not impossible, mind you. On January 12, 2022, a Bitcoin miner with a meager hash rate of just 126 terahashes per second—possibly a single Antminer S19 device—solved a legitimate block, earning 6.25 BTC.
Only two weeks later, another solo miner with a meager 86 Th/s solved another block.
But don’t count on solo mining to solve blocks. The odds of winning this lottery are absurdly small. Since it occurs so infrequently, news stories are always written about it!
Since solo mining a block is so uncommon, it always makes the news!
Con Kolivas, the creator of CKPool Solo, the most well known pool for solo miners says:
“However, that does a disservice to everyone because it gives the impression that anyone can figure out a block on their own. The answer is that you can, but it ignores the fact that 2,000 other miners have been working for one, two, or three years without receiving any compensation at all. All they’re doing is paying electricity bills, and they also paid the upfront costs to buy the mining hardware.”
Know the risk you’re taking on before going it alone. The extremely low probability of solo mining success is the reason most miners choose to be contribute to a pool.
How Long Does It Take to Mine 1 Bitcoin as Part of a Mining Pool?
The majority of Bitcoin miners cooperate as a mining pool, pooling their hash rates to increase the likelihood of finding a block. The rewards are split evenly among the pool’s miners, regardless of which one finds the block in reality.
For instance, Foundry USA currently controls 15.59% of the world’s hashrate and is the largest mining pool. As a result, they will eventually mine 15.59% of all Bitcoins.
As a result, a miner who contributes 1% of Foundry’s hashrate will also receive 1% of the BTC rewards it generates.
Assume we are using the Foundry USA pool and have one miner running, an Antminer S19 Pro with a hashrate of 110Th/s.
We can determine that we would earn about 0.000477 BTC per day using the MinerList ASIC list.
Accordingly, it would take us 2096 days (5 years and 270 days) to mine just one Bitcoin! And that’s under the implausible assumption that the level of difficulty won’t change.
How Long Does It Take to Mine a Bitcoin With a Mining Farm?
Consider a private mining farm as an illustration. We’ve seen many small farms that would fall into this category.
Shipping container private mining farm
Currently, a farm with 30–40 Antminer S19 Pro machines operating at a hashrate of 4 Ph/s will mine 0.017 BTC. That works out to one bitcoin every two months.
If course we should remember, a farm of this scale would cost $140 in electricity bills every day at a modest electricity price of $0.05/kwH.
How Long Does It Take to Mine a Bitcoin With Different Model of Antminer S19?
At current mining efficiency, it takes about 2475 days to mine one Bitcoin.
At current mining efficiency, it takes about 3464 days to mine one Bitcoin.
At current mining efficiency, it takes about 2193 days to mine one Bitcoin.
How Much Does It Cost to Mine a Bitcoin?
In these two examples, the electricity cost is the same whether we mine 1 bitcoin over 5 years or over 2 months. At an electricity price of $0.05/kwH, it will take $8000 to mine 1 bitcoin, assuming difficulty does not change, which is impossible.
This is why large mining farms are spending so much money on equipment, despite the weak market. They know that hashrate difficulty growth means the best time to mine is always now.
How Long Does It Take to Mine a Bitcoin from My Laptop?
Due to overheating issues, we do not advise laptop mining. At best, you’ll make a few dollars per month; at worst, your laptop will get damaged. Additionally, it will frequently be warm and noisy.
You’re looking at less than $20 in Bitcoin per month if your laptop has an RTX 2080, a mid-range graphics card released in 2018. Assumed here is that the laptop is always on and doesn’t get too hot. If the difficulty stays constant, it would take more than ten years to mine a bitcoin at the current price of BTC. However, we are aware that the level of difficulty will continue to rise, and it’s possible that a laptop will never be able to mine a single bitcoin.