Recovery of small-scale personal Bitcoin mining: low ROI and decentralization are imperative

Some small personal Bitcoin miners use affordable hardware such as Bitaxe Gamma and platforms such as Solo CKPool to challenge industry dominance through "lottery mining", and occasionally win full block rewards of 3.125 BTC (plus handling fees). Despite the small chance of winning—only 1/13,760 per year for a 1.2 TH/s device—this trend supports decentralization, with individual mining activity growing by 12% since 2023. Although profitability is still at risk due to high network difficulty and energy costs, this model enhances Bitcoin’s ability to resist centralization.