Bitcoin Forum

Say someone wanted to solo mine with a very cheap setup with hopes to find a block themselves.
What would the odds of finding a block be over a certain amount of time?  I'm just trying to compare it to winning the lottery with a similar sized jackpot.  I want to compare the odds for fun.  If any probability / math experts want to chime in that would be great.

With a typical 13 TH/s Antminer/Avalon you have a ~ 1/3000 chance to hit a block next week, decreasing over time as difficulty grows.

Not sure how that compares to an actual lottery. You would probably need to figure out how many tickets is equivalent to the cost of ~250 kWh (roughly one week of power consumption for the miner), and account for the cost of the miner itself.

Just showing the math:

Current hashrate is about 35,000 PH, or 35,000,000 TH. 

Blocks per week is (on average) 6*24*7  = 1008

So chances for a single 13.5TH miner to find a block in a week is 13.5*1008/35,000,000 is 0.0003888 or 1 in 2572.

Choose your own estimate for future hashrate.

I looked at some local scratch-off lotteries during lunch time and there was one with a 75k USD top prize (equivalent to a Bitcoin block). Odds of winning that are 1/840000, ticket price 3 USD.

Let's say you pay 0.10 USD per kWh, that's 25 USD, or ~8 lottery tickets per week, or a ~1/100000 chance to win the top prize. It would seem that solo mining has far better odds but the scratch-offs have other prizes too... for example you have a 1/10 chance to win your 3 dollars back.