Can I mine BCH with my laptop or old PC?
The honest answer — plus what actually makes sense for a home miner on a budget.
The short answer
Technically yes. Practically no.
Your laptop can run SHA256 mining software and connect to SoloPool.eu right now. It will mine. It will submit shares. But the odds of it ever finding a block are so astronomically small that you would need to run it for millions of years on average to win once — all while paying more in electricity than a block is worth.
BCH uses the SHA256d algorithm — the same one as Bitcoin. In the mid-2010s people mined this with CPUs and GPUs. Then ASICs (purpose-built mining chips) appeared and became billions of times more efficient. CPUs and GPUs never recovered their relevance for SHA256.
Laptop warning: Running a CPU at 100% load 24/7 generates significant heat. Laptops are not designed for sustained full-load operation — you risk throttling, fan failure, or permanent damage to the motherboard over time. Desktop PCs handle it better but the economics are the same.
Why CPUs and GPUs can't compete
A CPU is a general-purpose chip designed to handle any task — running your browser, playing music, processing spreadsheets. It does SHA256 slowly because it wasn't designed for it.
An ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is a chip that does one thing only: SHA256 as fast as physically possible. It has no operating system, no graphics, no flexibility — just millions of tiny circuits optimised to hash.
The gap is enormous. A modern ASIC like the Antminer S21 does 200 TH/s. A fast desktop CPU does roughly 20–50 MH/s. That's the ASIC doing the work of about 10,000,000 CPUs — while using far less electricity per hash.
Real numbers — what your hardware actually gets you
At the current BCH network difficulty (~430 billion), here is what each device's average time to find a solo block looks like:
| Device | Hashrate | Expected time to find a block | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modern laptop CPU | ~15 MH/s | ~780 billion years | Not viable |
| Fast desktop CPU | ~50 MH/s | ~230 billion years | Not viable |
| Gaming GPU (RTX 4090) | ~1.5 GH/s | ~7.5 billion years | Not viable |
| Bitaxe Ultra (hobby ASIC) | ~500 GH/s | ~22 million years | Hobby / fun |
| Antminer S19 Pro | 110 TH/s | ~100,000 years | Serious mining |
| Antminer S21 (latest) | 200 TH/s | ~55,000 years | Serious mining |
Solo mining is pure luck — you could find a block on day one or never. These are expected averages, not guarantees. But the table shows why CPU/GPU mining is not realistic even as a lottery ticket. You can run the exact numbers for your hardware on our mining calculator.
Why even the Bitaxe is in the table: The Bitaxe is a purpose-built ASIC device for hobby miners. At ~500 GH/s it still has astronomically long expected times, but it uses only 15W, costs ~$50–80, and is designed to run 24/7 safely. People run Bitaxes for fun and the experience of participating in solo mining — not because they expect to win. That's the honest framing.
What actually makes sense for home miners
If you want to participate in BCH solo mining from home, these are your realistic options:
If budget is the concern, a single Bitaxe Ultra at ~€60 beats a laptop at SHA256 by a factor of 33,000 — and it won't damage itself or cost you a fortune in electricity doing it.
I still want to try — how to set up cpuminer
Fair enough. There's value in seeing it work, understanding the protocol, and learning how stratum connections function. Here's how to connect a CPU miner to SoloPool.eu. Just go in knowing your hashrate will show up as a very small number in the miners table.
Laptop users: keep an eye on your CPU temperature while this is running. Download HWMonitor (free) and stop mining if your CPU goes above 90°C. Sustained heat is the main risk — not the software itself.
Windows — step by step
- Edge blocks the download: After clicking download, open the Downloads panel (the arrow icon top-right, or press Ctrl+J). Find the file — it will show a warning. Click Keep or Keep anyway. If you only see Delete, click the three dots … next to it for more options and choose Keep.
- Windows Defender removes the file after extracting: Open Windows Security (search for it in the Start menu) → Virus & threat protection → Protection history. Find the blocked item and click Allow on device.
- Nothing works: Temporarily turn off real-time protection in Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → toggle off Real-time protection. Extract the zip, then turn it back on.
C:\cpuminer (create that folder when prompted). Open the folder — you'll see several .exe files: cpuminer-avx2.exe, cpuminer-sse2.exe and others. These are the same miner built for different CPU types. Start with cpuminer-avx2.exe — it works on any CPU made since ~2013. If it crashes immediately when you run it, use cpuminer-sse2.exe instead.
YOUR_BCH_ADDRESS with your Bitcoin Cash address. Then go File → Save As, change Save as type to All Files (*.*), navigate to C:\cpuminer, and save the file as start.bat. It must end in .bat not .txt — the Save As method above ensures this.
start.bat. A black window (Command Prompt) will open and start showing text — this is normal. After a few seconds you should see lines saying [...] accepted in green. That means it's working and submitting shares to the pool. Leave this window open while mining. Closing it stops the miner.
--threads=2 limits mining to 2 CPU threads so your laptop stays usable for other things. You can increase this number (e.g. --threads=4) for more hashrate, but your computer will become sluggish. The .my-pc part after your address is the worker name — change it to anything you like, it just shows up in the miners table on Pool Stats.
Linux
sudo apt install cpuminer. This installs the minerd command.YOUR_BCH_ADDRESS with your address:macOS
brew install cpuminer.YOUR_BCH_ADDRESS with your address:What you should see
After a few seconds you'll see accepted shares in the terminal. Your miner will appear in the Pool Stats miners table within a minute or two, showing a hashrate in MH/s. Everything is working correctly — it's just very slow.
BCH address format: SoloPool.eu accepts both the legacy format (1A1zP1...) and CashAddr format (bitcoincash:qq...). CashAddr is preferred. Not sure which you have? Use our Address Validator →
FAQ
Will I damage my computer by mining?
What about GPU mining BCH?
Can I mine BCH and Bitcoin at the same time?
Do I need an account to mine on SoloPool.eu?
bch.solopool.eu:3333 with your address as the username. If you find a block, the reward goes directly to that address via the coinbase transaction — no withdrawal needed.