LotoMiner (aka BTCLOTORPI ) A Full Node CPU Solo Mineral Oil Cooled Bitcoin Miner running on a recycled old Raspberry Pi 4 and powered by an old solar array to power it when the sun shines in effect mining bitcoin with the sun.
This type of mining isn’t novel by any means, and in fact it’s a style of mining is called “lottery
mining” where contributing to a pool is omitted in favour of attempting to solve the entire block
by pure random chance alone in the hopes that if it’s solved, the entire reward will be claimed
by the owner of the device alone.
Most would say "the probability of mining a block with a RPI 4 is zero" obviously these people
don't understand that probability zero simply does not exist in this universe and should not
confuse probability with possibility.
In the case of this device at the current hash rate it has under a one-in-two-billion
chance of mining a bitcoin block which is basically less chance of winning a lottery.
Some will say its simply wasting electricity which would be correct but in this case the RPI is
powered by a solar array with a small battery only meant to give time to the RPI and bitcoind to shutdown
when there is no sun and also not go into brown state.
So the fixed recurring costs are the proportional cost of the internet connection and the
electricity the router uses.
One of the issues has been the device over heating so we decided to dump the RPI and the ssd directly into mineral oil which helps, we also aded a fan to circulate the mineral oil.
We also added a telegram bot to be able to interact with it, check its sync state initially, check the space on the
SSD left, the ability to backup the blockchain if we one day will need to upgrade the ssd and more.
We also added led lights so that if it our destiny (We don't believe in free choice) to mine a bitcoin
block with this contraption the led's would flash and I would receive a telegram bot message.
As closing words we are not into crypto we believe everything except Bitcoin is a shitcoin and that
ETH is the mother asshole of all shitcoins as Ammous would say.
We see how mining pools and large corporate or even
national actors are dangerously centralising Bitcoin so running a full bitcoin node is our small
drop in the ocean to push back.
To the Question:
What are the chances of solo mining a bitcoin block with a raspberry pi 4?
DeepSeek Conclusion:
The Raspberry Pi 4 would take ~81.7 billion years on average to solo mine a block—longer than
the age of the universe (~13.8 billion years). This makes it statistically impossible to succeed.
Even with thousands of Pis, the odds remain effectively zero. Bitcoin mining today requires
specialized ASICs and participation in mining pools to earn rewards.
Gork Conclusion:
The chances of solo mining a Bitcoin block with a Raspberry Pi 4 are approximately 4 × 10⁻¹⁵ per
block, meaning you’d expect to wait 4.75 billion years on average for success. This is so
improbable that it’s effectively zero for practical purposes. Modern mining is dominated by
ASICs with terahashes or petahashes per second, leaving general-purpose devices like the
Raspberry Pi 4 infeasible for solo Bitcoin mining. Thus, while theoretically possible, the chances
are astronomically small and not worth pursuing.
Chatgpt Conclusion:
Solo mining Bitcoin with a Raspberry Pi 4 is technically possible (you can run the mining
software and attempt it), but it is for all practical purposes impossible to successfully mine a
block. The expected time to find one block is on the order of billions of years, given the Pi’s hash
rate versus the enormous Bitcoin network difficulty and hash power. It’s a fun experiment in
theory or for educational purposes, but the probability of success is effectively zero. In practice,
a Pi-based miner will never generate a block reward in any meaningful timeframe.
My Conclusion:
Even AI can not differentiate between chance and probability :) If this rig actually mines a block it will be because the universe conspire for it to be that way.
If it happens we will take the funds and open a foundation to help children with cancer.
In Perspective:
Bitcoin:
504 attempts/week (6 per hour * 12 * 7 the systems runs on the sun). Each attempt is 3e-
13. So 504 × 3e-13 = 1.512e-10. That's 0.00000001512% chance per week.
EuroMillions:
1 in 139 million ≈ 7.19e-9, which is 0.000000719% per week. So the lottery is about
48 times more likely (7.19e-9 ÷ 1.512e-10 ≈ 47.5).
Thus wining the lottery is only roughly 48 times more probable per week, cost much more
money, profits the government (50% tax) and more importantly does not support the Bitcoin network by strengthening the decentralization and increasing the number of independent validators.
LINK
Github Project Repo