Man tries Bitcoin mining at every price point and shares which one he believes is the best

A man decided that he was going to experiment with Bitcoin mining at every price point, from a $70 lottery miner to a $5,000 ASIC setup, to find out which one is actually worth the money.

After six years of experimenting with different ways to mine crypto, he had tried everything from a regular desktop computer to serious mining hardware.

Some experiments made a little money, while others turned out to be glorified space heaters.

After adding everything up, he had a pretty clear idea of which option was best.

Man tries Bitcoin mining with a $70 lottery miner

This crypto mining journey has been going on for six years, beginning in 2020, when YouTuber Financial Wolf started mining on a basic desktop computer he got for free as a gift from his dad.

A previous week-long experiment had generated him just 0.00012401 BTC, worth $2.22 at the time, so he then moved on to tiny Bitcoin ‘lottery miners’.

Instead of mining alongside thousands of other machines, these devices try to find an entire Bitcoin block by themselves.

The prize was huge: successfully finding a block would have earned the Wolf 3.125 BTC, worth roughly $207,000 at the time.

The odds were another story.

The YouTuber calculated that his $70 miner had about a one-in-17.5-billion chance of finding a block, and he pointed out that you were around 60 times more likely to win the Powerball jackpot.

He tested eight small lottery miners and five larger models, ranging from $250 to $800 and his result was just $4.

The more expensive versions offered better odds, but were still essentially very nerdy lottery tickets.

His $800 machine had around a one-in-1,782 chance of finding a block over a year, while costing roughly $200 in electricity.

His $5,000 mining setup

The YouTuber then spent $5,000 on two S19 Pro mining machines to see if serious hardware could do better.

Over 1,232 days, the pair mined 0.23638 BTC, worth around $16,000 at the Bitcoin price used in the video.

That sounds pretty good until the costs were added up.

The machines had lost around $4,600 in value, while electricity and hosting had cost another $11,424 over 40 months and so the final result was a $20.89 loss.

Had he simply invested the original $5,000 into Bitcoin instead, he estimated he would have had roughly 0.24 BTC and been around $9,918 in profit.

His altcoin mining experiments also struggled, with several machines that were once profitable becoming money pits after the cryptocurrencies they mined fell in value.

There are situations where mining can still make sense, particularly for people with free or extremely cheap electricity, tax advantages, or a way to use the heat generated by the machines.

For everyone else, his preferred option was the best: buy Bitcoin and dollar-cost average into it.

Even his final test reinforced the point because after three days of mining Monero on a Mac mini, he had generated around 30 cents worth of Bitcoin.

After trying almost every price point, the best Bitcoin mining machine for most people is probably the one they don’t buy.