The network as a whole mints 1 bitcoin about every 3.2 minutes. One miner takes far longer. At the difficulty in force on 25 October 2026, a single Antminer S21 XP (270 TH/s) in a pool would take about 22.7 years to earn 1 BTC from the block subsidy. Mining solo, the same machine would find a block once every 71 years on average, with no guarantee it ever finds one. To mine 1 BTC in about a year at today's difficulty you would need roughly 6.1 PH/s, which is about 23 of these machines.
Every figure below comes from one formula and a few dated network readings. You can redo the sums yourself whenever difficulty changes.
Where the network stands (25 October 2026)
- Difficulty: 140.58 trillion (mempool.space).
- Hashrate: about 1,070 EH/s, the 3-day average (mempool.space).
- Last adjustment: difficulty rose 5.92%. The next adjustment, at block 973,728, is estimated at +5.24% and is due around 29–30 October 2026. Blocks have recently averaged about 9.5 minutes, which is faster than the target, so difficulty is going up.
- Block subsidy: 3.125 BTC. It took effect at block 840,000 on 19–20 April 2024 (UTC timestamp 23:02, 19 April).
Why "10 minutes" does not mean 10 minutes for you
Bitcoin retargets difficulty every 2,016 blocks. The aim is for those blocks to take 1,209,600 seconds, which is two weeks, or 600 seconds per block. That ten-minute pace is for the whole network combined. With 144 blocks a day at 3.125 BTC each, about 450 new BTC are created daily, or 1 BTC every 3.2 minutes. Fees are extra.
Your share of those coins depends on your share of the network's work. Each block takes about difficulty × 2³² hashes on average. At today's difficulty that is about 6.04 × 10²³ hashes.
The formula
- Average time for you to find one block (solo):
difficulty × 2³² ÷ your hashrate - Average time to earn 1 BTC (pool, subsidy only): the same result × (1 ÷ 3.125)
Both ignore pool fees, transaction fees, hardware downtime and future difficulty changes.
Solo mining: a lottery with long odds
| Machine hashrate | Average time to find one block (3.125 BTC) |
|---|---|
| 100 TH/s | ~191 years |
| 200 TH/s | ~96 years |
| 270 TH/s (Antminer S21 XP) | ~71 years |
| 1 PH/s | ~19 years |
A 270 TH/s machine has about a 1 in 3.7 million chance of winning each block. Over a full year, roughly 52,560 blocks, that adds up to about a 1.4% chance of finding at least one. When it does win, the whole reward arrives at once in the block's generation transaction. You pay for electricity in every month that it doesn't.
Pool mining: steady, small and slow
A pool combines many miners' hashrate and pays each one in proportion to the work they contribute. Payouts become regular, but the expected total stays the same.
| Hashrate in a pool | Average time to earn 1 BTC |
|---|---|
| 100 TH/s | ~61 years |
| 200 TH/s | ~31 years |
| 270 TH/s (Antminer S21 XP) | ~22.7 years |
| 1 PH/s | ~6.1 years |
| ~6.1 PH/s (about 23 S21 XPs) | ~1 year |
Earlier estimates said one top machine could earn 1 BTC in under a year. They do not fit this arithmetic. At current difficulty, one machine earns about 0.00012 BTC a day.
Who mines the blocks
These are the blocks mempool.space attributed to each pool over the month to 25 October 2026:
- Foundry USA: 26.0%
- AntPool: 20.8%
- F2Pool: 16.4%
- ViaBTC: 9.3%
- SpiderPool: 6.2%
- MARA Pool: 5.1%
In May 2026, CoinDesk reported that Foundry, AntPool, F2Pool, SpiderPool and MARA Pool had joined the Stratum V2 working group with two other companies. Stratum V2 lets individual miners build their own block templates and choose which transactions go into a block. It does not change how concentrated hashrate is.
How many years to earn 1 BTC?
Enter your hashrate, the current difficulty and the block subsidy to see how long a pool takes, on average, to pay you 1 BTC from the subsidy alone.
| Your total hashrate | Network difficulty | Block subsidy | Average time to earn 1 BTC in a pool (subsidy only) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 270 TH/s | 140.58 trillion | 3.125 BTC | 22.7 years |
| 1,000 TH/s | 140.58 trillion | 3.125 BTC | 6.1 years |
| 6,100 TH/s | 140.58 trillion | 3.125 BTC | 1 years |
| 100 TH/s | 140.58 trillion | 3.125 BTC | 61.3 years |
- Each block takes about difficulty × 2³² hashes on average, and a year is taken as 52,560 blocks of 600 seconds.
- Hashrate, difficulty and subsidy are your inputs; the defaults are the article's 25 October 2026 readings.
- Mining solo gives the same average, but the payout arrives as a whole block or not at all: multiply the result by the subsidy to get the average years per block.
This is average-time arithmetic only: it leaves out pool fees, transaction fees, downtime, electricity and future difficulty changes, and cannot say whether mining would pay for itself.
What one machine costs to run
Hashrate Index lists the Antminer S21 XP at 270 TH/s, 3,645 W and 13.5 J/TH. These are aggregator figures, not Bitmain's own spec sheet. Running the machine around the clock uses about 87.5 kWh a day.
The power needed to mine 1 BTC does not depend on how many machines you run, only on how efficient they are. At 13.5 J/TH and today's difficulty, earning 1 BTC from the subsidy takes about 725,000 kWh:
| Electricity price | Electricity cost per 1 BTC mined |
|---|---|
| $0.05/kWh | ~$36,000 |
| $0.1487/kWh (US all-sector average, Aug 2026) | ~$108,000 |
| $0.1816/kWh (US residential average, Aug 2026) | ~$132,000 |
Compare these totals with the bitcoin price on the day you run the numbers. They leave out the machine itself, cooling, pool fees and repairs.
Can a home computer mine 1 bitcoin?
In practice, no. For illustration, a device producing 1 TH/s in a pool would need about 6,100 years to earn 1 BTC at today's difficulty. Ordinary computers produce far less than that. Bitcoin's SHA-256 work is now done by ASICs, which are chips built for nothing else.
What changes the answer
- Difficulty: it adjusts every 2,016 blocks. If hashrate rises, every time in the tables gets longer. If it falls, they get shorter.
- The next halving: at block 1,050,000 the subsidy drops to 1.5625 BTC. That is about 77,000 blocks away. At ten minutes a block it would arrive around April 2028, while the Bitcoin Wiki's projection table lists 2029. After it, the same hashrate earns half as much subsidy, so the long pool timelines above would stretch further.
- Transaction fees: fees go to the block's miner on top of the subsidy, which shortens the times above by an amount that varies.
- Efficiency and power price: these decide whether the time spent costs more than the coins it produces.
How to work out your own timeline
- Note your hashrate (TH/s) and power draw (W) from the machine's spec sheet.
- Get the current difficulty from a block explorer.
- Solo time per block = difficulty × 4,294,967,296 ÷ (hashrate in H/s). Divide the seconds by 86,400 to get days.
- Pool time per 1 BTC = the solo time × 0.32. Then add your pool's fee.
- Energy per BTC = power (kW) × 24 × days per BTC. Multiply by your price per kWh.
FAQ
How long does it take to mine one Bitcoin block?
The network targets ten minutes per block on average. Recently blocks have averaged about 9.5 minutes, which is why difficulty is rising.
What is the block reward in October 2026?
The subsidy is 3.125 BTC per block, plus the fees in that block. The subsidy halves to 1.5625 BTC at block 1,050,000.
Is solo or pool mining faster?
Both give the same average return. Pool payouts arrive steadily in small amounts. Solo mining pays nothing until you find a block, which a single machine may never do.
Limitations: every figure is an estimate from a single day's network readings (25 October 2026). Future difficulty, fees and halvings will change the results.
