My USB SHA256 lottery setup

Hey everyone I've noticed a lot of folks here are curious about solo mining with SHA256 in a lottery style. I’m running mine with two Gekkoscience Newpac2 miners and an old ThinkPad that also hosts a StorJ node with a 10TB HDD. The CPU is set up to solo mine Monero (XMR). You definitely need a powered USB hub to overclock the Gekkoscience Newpacs. I added a couple of cheap fans I had lying around to help with the overclocking. You can run this setup on a Raspberry Pi 2, 3, or 4, but it didn’t work with my Zero W. I stick with the ThinkPad since the STORJ node covers the costs easily. Honestly, I think this lottery might just waste time and power since the chances of solving a block are super slim. But I’ve got this laptop running 24/7 for the node anyway, so I figured I might as well treat it like a "lottery ticket." If I hit a block, that’d be awesome, lol. I’m using solo ck pool for this lottery. There’s a list of solo pools at the end of this post. You can use these USB miners for any coin that runs on the SHA256 algorithm like BTC, BCH, DGB, and so on. Here’s how to set it up: 1. I personally use Ubuntu Server since it’s really stable and doesn’t have the annoying auto updates/reboots like Windows. I recommend using any Debian-based OS. No need for a desktop environment. 2. Update your system. 3. Install necessary dependencies. 4. Download the Gekko version of cgminer. 5. Build cgminer. For Debian/RaspberryOS: 6. Run it. You can adjust the difficulty and frequency as you like. About Gekkoscience Newpac USB miners: I usually turn off the laptop screen to save some wattage. List of solo pools: CK Pool

I don't know how your post will go over with others in the mining section, but I appreciate your post, OP.  You remind me of this guy on Youtube who's always posting videos about using a RPi for crypto-related stuff.  What you're doing is probably a waste of time, but man....I really love those USB stick miners, even in 2021.  I just wish I'd gotten into bitcoin in the early days when you could still mine profitably with a few of those.  And it's weird that the prices of Gekkoscience miners and Moonlanders have shot up in the past year or so.  I'm not sure if they're becoming collectibles or if people are actually using them to do what you're doing (lottery mining). Anyway, the chances are against it but I wish you good luck finding a block.

There are a few coins out there (mostly scrypt but some SHA) with very low difficulty but some liquidity where one or two people stick mining can actually generate some money. Nothing real, but still $1 or so a day. The issue is that if someone comes in and hammers it one of them with an L3  / S9 or something "real" and then dumps. You have to go hunt down the next one, and find an exchange the has it, and a reliable pool. etc. I have a few smaller miners lottery mining but every once in a while I find something else that looks profitable and mine that for a bit. @iwantmyhomepaidwithbtc hope you get lucky and find a block. -Dave

Thank you very much  Exact man, I really appreciate Raspberry and minimalist hardware in general !  I am exactly as you, I would love to go back of some years to say to myself buy tons of these usb keys lol I think that when you see them on ebay for more than 100$ it's just of form of gambling from the seller, he hopes that someone who doesn't know what he does buy it from him thinking "it will be more easy than asic" and not aware that if you buy them in Germany from bitshopper, it's only 79euros (in April they had stock for example at this price, during the same time on ebay between 180 and 800 euros) Thank you for your good vibes, have a nice day ! Thank you very much ! I'll keep you all informed if I am the lucky one one day !

Great post and good luck! Here's my lottery rig running on top of my lightning node. Brought it back to life recently. Had a transaction stuck in the mempool way too long during that drop last month and realized I don't feel comfortable unless I'm fully engaged in the network, however statistically insignificant that contribution may be.

Thank you, I wish you good luck too my friend ! I'm the same as you. I have many TH/s here but I'm still letting go my 90 GH/s sticks haha    Have a nice day !

i'm actually running 14 of these sticks for now...have a couple more on preorder too haha. Always wanted to get into mining but never did cause i always thought buying spot was better/cheaper/more lucrative. never had any interest in the S9 and stuff like that cause they are loud and ugly. if you use a $1-10M BTC price, then each stick is currently mining like 40¢ - $4 a day in terms of straight up ROi (using USD not BTC), you'd prob be better off using the money spent on the hardware to buy BTC at spot or lotto mode but I'm using these to mine & hodl forever. its dope to not have non-KYC, protocol issued btc. in about 10-20 years people will be mining what we mine now w/ a couple GH for 50-200 TH which is why i am doing it (plus to learn). plus these look cool, is super silent & friends always ask about it now.

If you don't mind, you can share your node URI either in this thread or here. I am willing to open a channel to other forum members. Someone else might be interested in it too.

The bolded part above is one big 'if'.  Right now bitcoin is very far away from the lower end of that range ($1million), and those sticks are very cool IMO but are also currently very unprofitable--but I'm certainly not discouraging you from using them.  People have long said that claiming bitcoin from faucets is a waste of time, but I remember back in 2015-16 that you could easily find faucets that paid 500 sats every 5-10 minutes.  Nowadays I'm not even sure what the state of faucets is and if they still exist. So yeah, if you're betting on bitcoin going to the moon, mining with USB sticks isn't a bad idea at all--providing you don't overpay for them.  I looked on eBay for the Gekkoscience sticks, and they're not cheap anymore.

Small update So far 796G of work done with a Bestshare of 2.2T I've added some R4s and will add 2 R606 in the next weeks on the solo pool Will update this post in the coming weeks

Godddd i have never seen butterfly labs in ages are you buying these back from a couple of years ago or just buying second hand on eBay. You are the real of OG  . Good luck with both of you, the chance is very small  but "If we never try how will we know baby how far this thing could Go  "

From my side, I don't really buy gear anymore for a while. I've had these Newpacs for a very long time, same with my other ASICS. My S9, S9k, R4, S17 etc... have been profitable for a long time, but I won't try to buy more servers for now, even if we can find some great deals with Antminer S19 pro for example, I find it much easier to just buy and hold BTC. I'm in Europe, and even if my country has the cheapest electricitypossible  in Europe, it's not profitable anymore since the war in Ukraine started and the increase of the price per kw/h. I just bought 2 Terminus R606 here on the forum, 2 more toys to put in solo mining at kano pool! (even if the passage to the customs seems compromised for a reason which I still don’t understand…) I don't know but the price per USB miner is crazy high on Ebay, I am not sure these people will ever find someone to sell a Block Eruptor at 245 usd lol

Did you have any technical problems in the meantime or was it smooth sailing for the last two years since the setup, 24/7 operation?

No I never had any issue with the lottery for now. The Thinkpad died but it was normal, it was a very old one, the mobo just randomly died. I changed the 2 USB fans for 1 USB fan with higher RPM. Now the lottery is on a POS server with 24V USB ports. It has increased the hashrate a lot for the USB miners. The only technical issues I had, was with some S9k et S17 (some hashboard died), but nothibg abnormal, these ASICs own a bad reputation regarding stability

Awesome, thanks for sharing! I had a similar project in mind, but didn't want to spend too much time in case there's lot of baby sitting around them.  Yeah, nothing unusual, or better yet - the usual.

Yeap I confirm there is 0 babysitting as long as your fan doesn't die  Good luck to you !

How much TH do you mine SOLO. Why you choose KANO and not SOLOMINING. I mine solo with one S9 on solomining (Im from EU).

I have non-stop 0,3 Th/s with the USB miners pointed to kano's pool 7/24.. I power on some Antminers R4 sometimes and they are on Kano, but less than 70h per week. I have 14 Th/s pointed to BTC Solomining.io 7/24 too, because I really appreciate the pool owner and his work. I had great luck mining on his other pools. I will add between 2 and 3 TH/s to kano's pool with the 2 R606 coming. BTC solo is for me only like a lottery ticket, I cannot afford to use too much hashrate on it. I solo mine a other SHA-256 coin (less difficult of course) with 200 TH/s on solomining.io I am big fan of ckpool, but in EU, from my side, the ping time is not good. I have 28 ms to kano DE and 40 ms with solomining.io (more than 100 with ckpool) I want to support Kano, Solomining.io and CKpool. So I have my small "gadget" miners pointed on Kano, and my personnal ASICs on Solomining.io When I rent hashrate with Nicehash, I use North America server and I use ckpool.

Can I ask the reason you are using a fork of CGMiner and not the Kano release is there a reason for this?

I used this fork because it was the one provided by the Gekko reseller at the time (bitshopper.de). I am now using kanoi cgminer since 5 or 6 months