I have a way of powering a miner for free or almost free.
What I'm wondering is, when you mine on your own, do you receive a very small part of a bitcoin per a day, or can you only earn any bitcoin if you find one?
Im just wondering If I leave a miner on for a year and I don't care about the electric bill, will I have any bitcoin at all?
Thanks guys
If you mine alone ("solo mining") and solve a block, you will be awarded all of the coins (i.e., mining Bitcoin, you'd receive all 12.5). However, your hashing power is going to be so low compared to what it take to reliably solve blocks that you're essentially playing the lottery. The odds of you solving the block by yourself is one in hundreds of millions.
So, most people join pools where the hashing power of all users' miners/rigs is combined. If the pool solves a block, then the awarded coins are divided among all users in the pool, typically weighted for the user's hashing power, minus the pool's fee.
It would be more profitable for you to use free energy to mine in a pool. Lottery mining can be fun, but the vast majority of people will make more money in a pool.
