The shortest possible time to mine 1 Bitcoin is about 10 minutes. This is because a new block is added to the Bitcoin blockchain approximately every 10 minutes. When a miner adds a new block to the Bitcoin blockchain, they receive a 6.25 BTC reward (approx. $326,000 as of writing).
In practice, this reward is often split among a large number of miners since most miners are part of Bitcoin mining pools. Joining a mining pool ensures much more consistent payouts compared to being a solo miner.
Key highlights:
- Unless you make a very large investment in Bitcoin mining hardware, you likely won't ever be able to mine 1 Bitcoin.
- Bitcoin mining is an extremely competitive industry, and the difficulty of mining has been increasing consistently.
- You would need to buy millions of dollars' worth of Bitcoin ASIC miners to be able to mine 1 BTC per day.
How long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin?
The realistic amount of time it takes to mine 1 Bitcoin depends almost entirely on how much computing power you have.
Let’s illustrate our point with an example of how earning Bitcoin mining rewards works. The majority of Bitcoin miners join mining pools in order to receive rewards consistently. There’s a large number of active Bitcoin mining pools, although Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool have a very large market share.
The image below shows the percentage of all Bitcoin blocks that were mined by a particular pool on the last day. The data was collected on February 16, 2024, but that’s not too important since we’re just using it to explain an example.
Bitcoin mining pool distribution by blocks mined. Image source: BTC.com
The more hashrate a mining pool has, the more likely it is to mine any given block.
As we can see, the Foundry USA mining pool mined 32.9% of Bitcoin blocks in the last 3 days. On average, it contributed 181 EH/s (exahashes per second) worth of hashrate in that time period, mining a total of 141 blocks (roughly 47 blocks per day). Meanwhile, the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network in that period was 605 EH/s.
On average, in the last 3 days, Foundry USA mined 47Bitcoin blocks each day, which translates to 293.75 BTC in daily rewards. So, in order to mine 1 BTC in 1 day, you would need to contribute roughly 1/293.75, or 0.615% of Foundry USA’s hashrate. This translates to 0.615 EH/s, or 615,400 TH/s (terahashes per second).
One Bitmain S19k Pro miner, which costs $2,520, has a hashrate of 120 TH/s. This means that you would need 5,128 Bitmain S19k Pro miners, costing a total of $12.9 million (ignoring electricity, storage, and operational costs), to have enough hashrate to mine one Bitcoin per day.
The time it takes to mine 1 Bitcoin depends on your computing power
Obviously, not many people will be able to afford the kind of infrastructure that’s required to mine 1 BTC per day. Let’s take a look at how long it takes to mine a Bitcoin, assuming smaller investments into Bitcoin miners.
| Number of mining rigs | Hashrate | Investment | Time to mine 1 Bitcoin |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 600 TH/s | $12,600 | 1026 days |
| 10 | 1,200 TH/s | $25,200 | 513 days |
| 20 | 2,400 TH/s | $50,400 | 256 days |
| 50 | 6,000 TH/s | $126,000 | 103 days |
| 100 | 12,000 TH/s | $252,000 | 51 days |
| 500 | 60,000 TH/s | $1,260,000 | 10 days |
| 1,000 | 120,000 TH/s | $2,520,000 | 5 days |
| 5,000 | 600,000 TH/s | $12,600,000 | 1 day |
The calculations are based on Bitcoin mining difficulty on February 16, 2024, and assume that the user is buying Bitmain S19k Pro miners, which the manufacturer is currently selling for $2,520 and have a listed hashrate of 120 TH/s. Electricity and other costs are not included in the calculations.
As you can see, the Bitcoin mining space is extremely competitive, and large investments are needed if you want to mine 1 BTC in a relatively short period of time. In the future, mining one Bitcoin will become even more difficult. This is because the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network has been trending upwardfor the last 5 years, and the next Bitcoin halving in 2024 will reduce the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
You need professional-grade hardware to mine 1 Bitcoin
The majority of Bitcoin is mined in large multi-million dollar mining farms.
If you don’t have specialized Bitcoin mining hardware, you will not be able to mine 1 Bitcoin in a reasonable amount of time. For example, mining 1 Bitcoin with a gaming GPU is next to impossible given the extreme amounts of competition in the Bitcoin mining market.
Operating a solo Bitcoin mining rig is more akin to playing the lottery than a way to make an income unless you have a very large mining operation with thousands of mining rigs. Your best bet to make an income with Bitcoin mining is to join a mining pool, although you’ll still need to make a considerable investment into mining hardware to make it worthwhile.
The reason why solo Bitcoin mining is not viable for most people is that the Bitcoin protocol issues each block reward to one miner only. So, for example, if you had 0.0001% of the Bitcoin network’s hashrate, you would only have a 0.0001% chance to receive anything at all when a block is mined.
If you joined a mining pool, on the other hand, you would receive a small amount of Bitcoin (proportional to the hashrate you contribute) every time one of the miners in your pool mines a block.
The bottom line — don’t expect to mine 1 Bitcoin unless you make a significant investment into mining hardware
Bitcoin mining is a highly competitive field, and you will need to make a significant investment if you want to make it worthwhile. For example, it takes around $25,200 worth of mining hardware to mine 1 Bitcoin in a year, and that’s without taking other costs such as electricity into account. The Bitcoin mining scene is mostly dominated by mining farms controlled by large BTC mining companies, many of which are traded on the stock market.
Unless you are planning to take it very seriously, we don’t recommend engaging in Bitcoin mining, as you will most likely be doing it at a loss while only having a negligible contribution to the network’s security. If you want to improve the decentralization of the Bitcoin network, consider running a Bitcoin node without mining.
If you’re bullish on Bitcoin, it’s probably better to just buy it rather than try to mine it. If you’re wondering if BTC is a good buy at the moment, make sure to check out our article exploring if Bitcoin is a good investment.
FAQs
How long does it take to mine 1 Bitcoin?
The smallest possible amount of time to mine 1 Bitcoin is around 10 minutes, although this would take extreme amounts of luck. In this scenario, you would actually receive 6.25 Bitcoin and not just 1 Bitcoin. Realistically, the amount of time it takes to mine 1 Bitcoin depends almost entirely on how much hashrate you have.
How many Bitcoins are left to mine?
There are just over 1.5 million Bitcoin left to mine. The maximum supply of Bitcoin is set at 21 million, and there are 19.56 million BTC coins currently in circulation.
Can you randomly mine 1 Bitcoin?
Yes, it is possible to randomly mine 1 Bitcoin even if you don’t have a professional-grade Bitcoin miner. However, your chances will be extremely slim, in some cases even lower than winning the lottery. In order to have a chance to mine 1 Bitcoin with a low-powered mining set up, you need to mine solo instead of joining a mining pool.
Can you mine 1 Bitcoin a day?
Yes, it is possible to mine 1 Bitcoin a day, although this would require a very large investment in mining hardware. In current Bitcoin network conditions, you would need over $10 million worth of Bitmain S19k Pro miners to mine 1 Bitcoin a day.
