<p>As long as you're in good communication with the network and have a hashrate measured in something better than minutes per hash, yes, you technically do have a chance of successfully mining a block, even if your hashrate is tiny compared to the whole network. Then the question is, what are your chances and should you do it? I think an analogy with a lottery is apt.</p>

<p>In one week, <a href="http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp">a lottery</a> might cost you $2 (for one ticket) and give you a 1 in 175 million chance to win $100 million (ignoring smaller prizes, splitting prizes, etc.; complicates things too much). This gives it a return on investment (ROI) of about <strong>29%</strong>, so we'll treat this as our baseline: if it's lower than this, it's worse than the lottery and you shouldn't "play".</p>

<p>If you buy a $34.52, 5 GH/s <a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00JCABMSI">ASIC miner</a> that uses 2.5W of power, you <a href="http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/">might spend about</a> $0.06 in a week to have a 1 in 13,889 chance to win $11,349. Not counting the upfront investment, this is a 1,361% ROI, so it's worth it. If you factor in the cost of the device (split over a year) and a profitability decline (since the rest of the network will be speeding up), I think you're still looking at an <strong>~80%</strong> ROI.</p>

<p>In one week of CPU mining (assuming <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison">20 MH/s</a> at 70 W), you might spend $1.75 in power to have a 1 in 3,472,222 chance to win $11,349. This is a <strong>0.18%</strong> ROI, so CPU mining really makes no sense, even as a lottery (it'd be better to just buy a lottery ticket).</p>

<p>(my calculations are at <a href="http://pastebin.com/ERJHshFG">http://pastebin.com/ERJHshFG</a>)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-10T14:12:45.407Z
Lottery ROI is consant. Bitcoin difficulty is not. That 80% ROI of Bitcoin ASIC mining will be 8% in the next 6 months.
Maciej Mączko
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T16:36:01.270Z
@TimS, but surely there's a *minimum* amount of computational power you need before you can even "take part in the bitcoin mining lottery" right?
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T16:43:00.917Z
@Pacerier There is a minimum. E.g. you can't do it with [human calculations](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/21030/12034), because by the time you finish one hash (~9.4 hours), more blocks have been found. If you could do one hash in 1 minute, you'd average 10 hashes per block, maybe wasting ~5% of your effort. I'd estimate 10 minutes per hash as the minimum to participate: you could do approx. 1 hash per block. There is a chance that hash is the right one! You've played the lottery. (any computer is measured in kilohashes per second, at least; many times faster than the minimum)
Tim S.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T16:51:28.770Z
@Pacerier note that there is no *hard* minimum. It's possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that no blocks would be found by the network in the ~10 hours you're calculating a hash by hand, and possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that your hash will meet the target difficulty, and possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that you did not make any mistakes in that 10 hours of arithmetic. However, I'm pointing out that when you get into the range of minutes per hash (or slower), there is an extra limiting factor: blocks have likely been found in the meantime.
Tim S.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T16:53:02.243Z
@TimS., Good points, didn't thought of that *hard* minimum. Btw, that extra limiting factor is actually closer to 3 minutes right? Since we had to factor in the delay of actually getting notified when someone else has won lottery.
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T17:01:03.200Z
@Pacerier Blocks are [typically propagated](http://bitcoinstats.com/network/propagation/) in seconds, so that's not significant for our purposes. (I'm assuming that you're using typical modern hardware for everything except the actual hash; e.g. if you're on a dial-up connection, your time to get the block might be significantly longer than typical)
Tim S.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-10T12:07:59.363Z
2014-05-10T12:07:59.363Z
Tim S.
<p>I do not think the question was about the "how long" it would take in average, but what are the odds, which is something completely different from my point o view.
If I understand well the concept of solving blocks then there are always more people/groups/pools trying to solve one block.
If that's so then solving a block is always more about the luck than the brute force you have. Even if you have a 1GH rig, you can still find the solution quicker then 1PH pool.
Question is: what are the odds that it will happen?
I would expect a ration : to take place in the answer.
So if the current total H-power is about 7.6PH it means that with 1GH rig you have 1:7600000 probability to solve the block approx. every 8 minutes. Which is 1:116 per a year, if the total H-power does not change and it basically does not depend on the difficulty, as the difficulty is based on total H-power.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-12T11:37:16.740Z
You are correct, the question was about the odds of the asker succeeding in finding a block. However, you can either express the odds as chance per block or as expected time until the outcome will be achieved, Luca has chosen the latter. The 1GH is also highly over-estimating his CPU's mining power, a more realistic value would be less than 0.05 GH/s. So, the odds are more along the line of 1:3320 per year, traded for the energy cost of running the PC at full-blast for a year.
Murch
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-12T07:21:34.217Z
2013-12-12T07:21:34.217Z
noob
<p>I'm solo mining AmericanCoin on a US$6/month VPS generating about 7 scrypt kilohashes per second, and just won <a href="http://jc.unternet.net/blog/?2013-12#T2013-12-26-0224Z" rel="nofollow" title="AMC block 55311">block 55311</a> about an hour ago, after about 8 weeks of trying with the random-nonce scrypt-mining script linked to from my blog. so it can be done, if the difficulty is low enough. it might have worked just as well or better with the built-in linear-nonce mining code, but I figured using random numbers would give me an edge in the "luck" department.</p>

<p>here's the current difficulty. when I started it was about 1.9, then went up to about 4 before dropping back.</p>

<pre><code>jcomeau@aspire:~$ americancoind getmininginfo
{
    "blocks" : 55328,
    "currentblocksize" : 0,
    "currentblocktx" : 0,
    "difficulty" : 3.51815597,
    "errors" : "",
    "generate" : false,
    "genproclimit" : -1,
    "hashespersec" : 0,
    "networkhashps" : 19038678,
    "pooledtx" : 0,
    "testnet" : false
}
</code></pre>

<p>so it's not nearly paying for itself, but as a proof-of-concept it was worthwhile to me, as well as being a cheap way of getting my gambling "fix".</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T16:37:01.817Z
@jcomeau_ictx, Did you just won 25 btcs?
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-28T04:22:31.567Z
no, not mining BTC. I've only successfully mined AMC and ARG.
jcomeau_ictx
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-12T17:44:21.247Z
It will not improve your chances. It doesn't even affect your gambliness.
Lodewijk
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-27T18:06:08.413Z
how do you mine through the command line? is this a feature built into all bitcoind derivative code?
Sun
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-28T13:54:09.960Z
by writing a script that communicates with the daemon through RPC. mine won't work with Bitcoin any more, as it no longer provides the `getwork` call. the script is linked to in my answer above, via my blog, to Pastebin.
jcomeau_ictx
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-26T02:57:11.227Z
2013-12-26T02:57:11.227Z
jcomeau_ictx
<p>It's better than being in the lottery!</p>

<p>The chance you actually find a block will sadly decrease over time (probably). Thing is, if you're lucky you win the lottery. And if you don't get lucky, you don't win and get nothing.</p>

<p>The advantage of being in a pool is that you play in more lotteries, so your luck averages out . If you get lucky 1% of the time and you try once, you probably won 0% of the time. If you try very often it will tend to balance around 1%.</p>

<p>So, all chance calculations aside, are you feeling lucky?</p>

<p>To answer your question more directly: the long block-intervals (10 minutes) are there to reduce network-lag's influence on people's ability to mine on the newest block. There's some influence, inevitably, but others endure it too. Pools can have a minor advantage if they're close together, but the miners connect through them instead of directly. I think there'd be no difference worth mentioning. Short: Yes, it is your % vs network %.</p>

<p>Small footnote should be made about selfish mining, if another pool is big enough they'll have a mining advantage. Smaller it'd be a disadvantage. It's not being done and I hope pools will stay spread thinly enough to make it ineffective. You can safely ignore this. It also doesn't likely matter when you're "lottery mining" (you're still betting just on your own luck!).</p>

<p>Note: you'll have more luck solo-mining LiteCoin or another GPU/CPU coin. Unless you own an ASIC, of course.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T16:34:32.497Z
Better than *which* lottery?
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-05-22T18:40:07.160Z
Well.. Assuming that your mining hardware is equal to others' you'll be better off than any lottery. Provided the lottery works as expected (collect money and give it to a single participant - fees). But with worse hardware it all just depends.
Lodewijk
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-05-13T00:00:39.263Z
question, if i am in a pool and did find 3 blocks in 12 hours... would solo mining be of consideration ? should i expect to find 3 or so a day or did the pool actually helped narrowing the winning slot ?
altagir
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-12T12:55:05.390Z
2013-12-12T12:55:05.390Z
Lodewijk
<p>The beauty of Bitcoin is that it provides anyone with a chance to earn free bitcoins. No matter what statistics are used to calculate the odds of hitting the jackpot, they can never be used to predict the outcome.
As we all can read in the numerous variaties and complications (when it comes to calculating probabilities) in the above mentioned posts, it's obvious that there will never be a mathematical model able to predict the possibilities.
There are too many variables that change continously overtime (diffuclty rate, amount of miners, growing blockchain etc.)
Instead of focussing on mining itself you better try and find a way to reduce the cost. If one could use solar energy to power his/her computer then it's no problem at all to have it up and running up to 20 years or even more. In that case it's cheaper then taking part in a lottery and your chances to hit the pot will be no more or less the same either way. 
That's why we call it luck ;)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-02-15T14:10:04.317Z
Downvoted: "No matter what statistics are used to calculate the odds of hitting the jackpot, they can never be used to predict the outcome. As we all can read in the numerous variaties and complications (when it comes to calculating probabilities) in the above mentioned posts, it's obvious that there will never be a mathematical model able to predict the possibilities." For being ill-informed and absurd.
Murch
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-02-14T14:54:57.870Z
2016-02-14T14:54:57.870Z
klaas
<p>Check this page: <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#How_soon_might_I_expect_to_generate_a_block.3F">How soon might I expect to generate a block?</a> </p>

<p>So with the current difficulty  <code>510,929,738</code>, and a 1Ghash/s mining rig (faster than your CPU) you'd do this math:</p>

<p><code>510929738 * Math.pow(2,32) / Math.pow(10,9) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365</code></p>

<p>So to find a block at this difficulty with a 1Ghash mining rig it would take you about <strong>69 years</strong> on average.
Good Luck!</p>

<p>PS: <code>Math.pow(2, 32)</code> is simply the JavaScript version of <code>2^32</code></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-14T16:38:30.473Z
Where 69 years is the *expected time*, it could be much quicker with luck, but likely much longer because the difficulty its constantly increasing meanwhile.
Murch
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-15T08:23:31.763Z
Thank you. One more thing, is theory and practice the same thing in this case?
Isac
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-15T08:35:10.703Z
@Isac: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice…
Stéphane Gimenez
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-15T08:36:07.630Z
As dam close as. Don't use your CPU, use the electric bill your running up to go buy lottery tickets instead, better odds.
MaxSan
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-15T08:52:01.790Z
Thank you, I think I will buy a USB Block Erupter just for fun. CPU is as you say, very useless.
Isac
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-03-30T21:50:03.377Z
you miss the point of the question really. What's the odds of a lottery buyer to win it? Maybe one in 10 million or something. Yet someone could buy only a couple of times and win it. Does everyone have to wait years to win it? Of course not. The math may say 69 years, but your luck might actually make that into a couple days. I think that's what OP is asking.
mavili
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-28T19:49:38.367Z
@mavili: It is impossible to know when you are supposed to be struck by a lightning. All we can say is that if you wait for x years then you probably will be.
PS: today difficulty is 888171856257.3206
Eduardo
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-11-14T16:17:27.953Z
2013-11-14T16:43:16.950Z
2013-11-14T16:43:16.950Z
Luca Matteis
<p>Just turned my attention to mining and the concepts are quite new to me. First of let me be clear: I realize that my hardware setup is far from ideal for mining. This is also the reason why I do not want to pool, I would simply provide a too small a share. I will be CPU mining at first, ASIC later on.</p>

<p>I would however like to test my luck. Mostly just for fun, I'm completely fine with the idea of never actually solving a block. I see it more as a lottery. I just want to confirm my idea so that I am not missing something: <em>Do I have a chance of solving a block?</em></p>

<p>If a block is solved every 10 minutes, and the difficulty goes up continously. Do I even have the time to attempt a solution? I understand that the current work has to be abandoned when a block has been solved, rigth? Is there, for example, a lag here that yields my efforts useless? </p>

<p>What are the odds? Are the actually the % of my speed vs the network's?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-09-10T07:23:59.450Z
related: [What are the odds of discovering a block as a solo miner?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/14346/5406)
Murch
<solo-mining><mining-profitability><hashpower>
Solo mining just for luck, realistic?
Isac
# Solo mining just for luck, realistic?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2013-11-14)

Just turned my attention to mining and the concepts are quite new to me. First of let me be clear: I realize that my hardware setup is far from ideal for mining. This is also the reason why I do not want to pool, I would simply provide a too small a share. I will be CPU mining at first, ASIC later on.

I would however like to test my luck. Mostly just for fun, I'm completely fine with the idea of never actually solving a block. I see it more as a lottery. I just want to confirm my idea so that I am not missing something: *Do I have a chance of solving a block?*

If a block is solved every 10 minutes, and the difficulty goes up continously. Do I even have the time to attempt a solution? I understand that the current work has to be abandoned when a block has been solved, rigth? Is there, for example, a lag here that yields my efforts useless?

What are the odds? Are the actually the % of my speed vs the network's?

**Tags:** solo-mining, mining-profitability, hashpower

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: related: [What are the odds of discovering a block as a solo miner?](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/14346/5406)  

---

## 6 answers

### Answer by username_11 on 2013-11-14. Score: 18 | Accepted answer

Check this page: [How soon might I expect to generate a block?](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Difficulty#How_soon_might_I_expect_to_generate_a_block.3F)

So with the current difficulty `510,929,738`, and a 1Ghash/s mining rig (faster than your CPU) you'd do this math:

`510929738 * Math.pow(2,32) / Math.pow(10,9) / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365`

So to find a block at this difficulty with a 1Ghash mining rig it would take you about **69 years** on average.
Good Luck!

PS: `Math.pow(2, 32)` is simply the JavaScript version of `2^32`

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Where 69 years is the *expected time*, it could be much quicker with luck, but likely much longer because the difficulty its constantly increasing meanwhile.  
> **username_0**: Thank you. One more thing, is theory and practice the same thing in this case?  
> **username_12**: @username_0: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice…  
> **username_13**: As dam close as. Don't use your CPU, use the electric bill your running up to go buy lottery tickets instead, better odds.  
> **username_0**: Thank you, I think I will buy a USB Block Erupter just for fun. CPU is as you say, very useless.  
> **username_14**: you miss the point of the question really. What's the odds of a lottery buyer to win it? Maybe one in 10 million or something. Yet someone could buy only a couple of times and win it. Does everyone have to wait years to win it? Of course not. The math may say 69 years, but your luck might actually make that into a couple days. I think that's what OP is asking.  
> **username_15**: @username_14: It is impossible to know when you are supposed to be struck by a lightning. All we can say is that if you wait for x years then you probably will be. PS: today difficulty is 888171856257.3206  

---

### Answer by username_2 on 2014-05-10. Score: 15

As long as you're in good communication with the network and have a hashrate measured in something better than minutes per hash, yes, you technically do have a chance of successfully mining a block, even if your hashrate is tiny compared to the whole network. Then the question is, what are your chances and should you do it? I think an analogy with a lottery is apt.

In one week, [a lottery](http://www.powerball.com/powerball/pb_prizes.asp) might cost you $2 (for one ticket) and give you a 1 in 175 million chance to win $100 million (ignoring smaller prizes, splitting prizes, etc.; complicates things too much). This gives it a return on investment (ROI) of about **29%**, so we'll treat this as our baseline: if it's lower than this, it's worse than the lottery and you shouldn't "play".

If you buy a $34.52, 5 GH/s [ASIC miner](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00JCABMSI) that uses 2.5W of power, you [might spend about](http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/) $0.06 in a week to have a 1 in 13,889 chance to win $11,349. Not counting the upfront investment, this is a 1,361% ROI, so it's worth it. If you factor in the cost of the device (split over a year) and a profitability decline (since the rest of the network will be speeding up), I think you're still looking at an **~80%** ROI.

In one week of CPU mining (assuming [20 MH/s](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison) at 70 W), you might spend $1.75 in power to have a 1 in 3,472,222 chance to win $11,349. This is a **0.18%** ROI, so CPU mining really makes no sense, even as a lottery (it'd be better to just buy a lottery ticket).

(my calculations are at <http://pastebin.com/ERJHshFG>)

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: Lottery ROI is consant. Bitcoin difficulty is not. That 80% ROI of Bitcoin ASIC mining will be 8% in the next 6 months.  
> **username_4**: @TimS, but surely there's a *minimum* amount of computational power you need before you can even "take part in the bitcoin mining lottery" right?  
> **username_2**: @username_4 There is a minimum. E.g. you can't do it with [human calculations](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/21030/12034), because by the time you finish one hash (~9.4 hours), more blocks have been found. If you could do one hash in 1 minute, you'd average 10 hashes per block, maybe wasting ~5% of your effort. I'd estimate 10 minutes per hash as the minimum to participate: you could do approx. 1 hash per block. There is a chance that hash is the right one! You've played the lottery. (any computer is measured in kilohashes per second, at least; many times faster than the minimum)  
> **username_2**: @username_4 note that there is no *hard* minimum. It's possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that no blocks would be found by the network in the ~10 hours you're calculating a hash by hand, and possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that your hash will meet the target difficulty, and possible (though exceedingly unlikely) that you did not make any mistakes in that 10 hours of arithmetic. However, I'm pointing out that when you get into the range of minutes per hash (or slower), there is an extra limiting factor: blocks have likely been found in the meantime.  
> **username_4**: @TimS., Good points, didn't thought of that *hard* minimum. Btw, that extra limiting factor is actually closer to 3 minutes right? Since we had to factor in the delay of actually getting notified when someone else has won lottery.  
> **username_2**: @username_4 Blocks are [typically propagated](http://bitcoinstats.com/network/propagation/) in seconds, so that's not significant for our purposes. (I'm assuming that you're using typical modern hardware for everything except the actual hash; e.g. if you're on a dial-up connection, your time to get the block might be significantly longer than typical)  

---

### Answer by username_5 on 2013-12-12. Score: 8

I do not think the question was about the "how long" it would take in average, but what are the odds, which is something completely different from my point o view.
If I understand well the concept of solving blocks then there are always more people/groups/pools trying to solve one block.
If that's so then solving a block is always more about the luck than the brute force you have. Even if you have a 1GH rig, you can still find the solution quicker then 1PH pool.
Question is: what are the odds that it will happen?
I would expect a ration : to take place in the answer.
So if the current total H-power is about 7.6PH it means that with 1GH rig you have 1:7600000 probability to solve the block approx. every 8 minutes. Which is 1:116 per a year, if the total H-power does not change and it basically does not depend on the difficulty, as the difficulty is based on total H-power.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: You are correct, the question was about the odds of the asker succeeding in finding a block. However, you can either express the odds as chance per block or as expected time until the outcome will be achieved, username_11 has chosen the latter. The 1GH is also highly over-estimating his CPU's mining power, a more realistic value would be less than 0.05 GH/s. So, the odds are more along the line of 1:3320 per year, traded for the energy cost of running the PC at full-blast for a year.  

---

### Answer by username_6 on 2013-12-26. Score: 3

I'm solo mining AmericanCoin on a US$6/month VPS generating about 7 scrypt kilohashes per second, and just won [block 55311](http://jc.unternet.net/blog/?2013-12#T2013-12-26-0224Z "AMC block 55311") about an hour ago, after about 8 weeks of trying with the random-nonce scrypt-mining script linked to from my blog. so it can be done, if the difficulty is low enough. it might have worked just as well or better with the built-in linear-nonce mining code, but I figured using random numbers would give me an edge in the "luck" department.

here's the current difficulty. when I started it was about 1.9, then went up to about 4 before dropping back.

```
jcomeau@aspire:~$ americancoind getmininginfo
{
    "blocks" : 55328,
    "currentblocksize" : 0,
    "currentblocktx" : 0,
    "difficulty" : 3.51815597,
    "errors" : "",
    "generate" : false,
    "genproclimit" : -1,
    "hashespersec" : 0,
    "networkhashps" : 19038678,
    "pooledtx" : 0,
    "testnet" : false
}

```

so it's not nearly paying for itself, but as a proof-of-concept it was worthwhile to me, as well as being a cheap way of getting my gambling "fix".

> **Comments:**
> **username_7**: It will not improve your chances. It doesn't even affect your gambliness.  
> **username_4**: @username_6, Did you just won 25 btcs?  
> **username_6**: no, not mining BTC. I've only successfully mined AMC and ARG.  
> **username_8**: how do you mine through the command line? is this a feature built into all bitcoind derivative code?  
> **username_6**: by writing a script that communicates with the daemon through RPC. mine won't work with Bitcoin any more, as it no longer provides the `getwork` call. the script is linked to in my answer above, via my blog, to Pastebin.  

---

### Answer by username_7 on 2013-12-12. Score: 3

It's better than being in the lottery!

The chance you actually find a block will sadly decrease over time (probably). Thing is, if you're lucky you win the lottery. And if you don't get lucky, you don't win and get nothing.

The advantage of being in a pool is that you play in more lotteries, so your luck averages out . If you get lucky 1% of the time and you try once, you probably won 0% of the time. If you try very often it will tend to balance around 1%.

So, all chance calculations aside, are you feeling lucky?

To answer your question more directly: the long block-intervals (10 minutes) are there to reduce network-lag's influence on people's ability to mine on the newest block. There's some influence, inevitably, but others endure it too. Pools can have a minor advantage if they're close together, but the miners connect through them instead of directly. I think there'd be no difference worth mentioning. Short: Yes, it is your % vs network %.

Small footnote should be made about selfish mining, if another pool is big enough they'll have a mining advantage. Smaller it'd be a disadvantage. It's not being done and I hope pools will stay spread thinly enough to make it ineffective. You can safely ignore this. It also doesn't likely matter when you're "lottery mining" (you're still betting just on your own luck!).

Note: you'll have more luck solo-mining LiteCoin or another GPU/CPU coin. Unless you own an ASIC, of course.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: Better than *which* lottery?  
> **username_7**: Well.. Assuming that your mining hardware is equal to others' you'll be better off than any lottery. Provided the lottery works as expected (collect money and give it to a single participant - fees). But with worse hardware it all just depends.  
> **username_9**: question, if i am in a pool and did find 3 blocks in 12 hours... would solo mining be of consideration ? should i expect to find 3 or so a day or did the pool actually helped narrowing the winning slot ?  

---

### Answer by username_10 on 2016-02-14. Score: -2

The beauty of Bitcoin is that it provides anyone with a chance to earn free bitcoins. No matter what statistics are used to calculate the odds of hitting the jackpot, they can never be used to predict the outcome.
As we all can read in the numerous variaties and complications (when it comes to calculating probabilities) in the above mentioned posts, it's obvious that there will never be a mathematical model able to predict the possibilities.
There are too many variables that change continously overtime (diffuclty rate, amount of miners, growing blockchain etc.)
Instead of focussing on mining itself you better try and find a way to reduce the cost. If one could use solar energy to power his/her computer then it's no problem at all to have it up and running up to 20 years or even more. In that case it's cheaper then taking part in a lottery and your chances to hit the pot will be no more or less the same either way.
That's why we call it luck ;)

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Downvoted: "No matter what statistics are used to calculate the odds of hitting the jackpot, they can never be used to predict the outcome. As we all can read in the numerous variaties and complications (when it comes to calculating probabilities) in the above mentioned posts, it's obvious that there will never be a mathematical model able to predict the possibilities." For being ill-informed and absurd.  

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