Bitaxe Best Difficulty: What the Best Value in AxeOS Really Means

By Dominik Lederer, Founder, Hardware Engineer & Solo Mining Expert at Polarblocks · August 9, 2026 · 7 min read

What does Best Difficulty actually mean on a Bitaxe?

Every hash your miner calculates is a number. Most of these numbers are unremarkable. Some start with a few zeros, and the more leading zeros a number has, the rarer it is. This rarity is precisely what share difficulty measures. A share with a value of 500 million means: such a hash occurs on average once in 500 million times 2 to the power of 32 attempts.

AxeOS only remembers one number from this: the highest one. That is Best Difficulty. The value is a leaderboard with exactly one entry, and it is maintained because people like leaderboards. I like them too. But it means something different than most owners believe.

The Canadian workshop D-Central describes it in their AxeOS manual as follows:

„Best difficulty does not affect your mining performance; it is simply the most impressive share your device has discovered so far.“
Source: D-Central, AxeOS Complete Guide

How high does the best value have to be for a block to be found?

Exactly as high as the current network difficulty. Since yesterday evening, that's 127,479,855,693,691. In words: about 127.5 trillion. The retarget took place on August 8, 2026, at 19:35:55 UTC at block 961,632 and raised the hurdle by 0.99 percent.

This almost one percent sounds like nothing. Nevertheless, for every best value displayed in an AxeOS dashboard worldwide, it means it is one percent further from the target than before Saturday evening. Records age.

For a device with 1.3 TH/s, the annual chance also shifts. It was 1 in 13,224 until Saturday and is now 1 in 13,355. The calculation is always the same: network difficulty multiplied by 2 to the power of 32, divided by your own hashrate, gives the expected waiting time in seconds. If you want to see the detailed derivation, you can find it in our article on Solo Mining Probability Explained.

What is a normal Best Difficulty value after one day, one month, one year?

Hardly anyone answers this question, even though it's the most interesting one. It can be calculated. You divide the number of hashes by 2 to the power of 32 and by the natural logarithm of 2, and you get the median value of the expected best value. Median means: in half of all cases, your device will be above this, and in the other half, it will be below. The dispersion for this metric is huge, which is part of being honest.

Runtime at 1.3 TH/s	Typical Best Value (Median)	Share of Network Hurdle
1 Day	Approx. 37.7 Million	0.00003 Percent
1 Week	Approx. 264 Million	0.0002 Percent
30 Days	Approx. 1.13 Billion	0.0009 Percent
1 Year	Approx. 13.77 Billion	0.011 Percent

One year of continuous operation, 149 kilowatt-hours of electricity, and the record stands at about 13.8 billion. 127.5 trillion would be needed. A factor of 9,257 is missing. Once you've read this table, you'll interpret your dashboard differently.

Another number that helps more in everyday life than the record itself: a device with 1.3 TH/s produces, on average, nine to ten shares per year that are above one billion. Not nine per week. Nine per year. If your best value is already at three billion after two weeks, you've been exceptionally lucky, and that's a nice moment. It doesn't say anything about the weeks to come.

Why doesn't a high best value bring you closer to the block?

Because Bitcoin has no memory. Every ten minutes, a new round begins with a new block header, and everything your device calculated before is worthless for the current round. There is no progress bar. There is no accumulated proximity.

This is where solo mining differs from any experience we bring from everyday life. In a marathon, every kilometer brings you closer to the finish line. In solo mining, every hash is a unique roll of the dice with the same chance as the first. A best value of 50 billion doesn't mean you're 0.04 percent done. It means you rolled exceptionally well once.

I say this consciously as someone who sells these devices. The idea that a rising best value is some kind of loading bar is the most common misconception among new owners, and it almost always leads to disappointment after about three months. Those who know from the beginning that they are operating a lottery ticket with a 1 in 13,355 chance per year remain relaxed. The complete calculation can be found in our Expected Value Analysis.

What does the best value reveal about the health of my miner?

This is where the metric suddenly becomes useful. Best Difficulty statistically grows with the amount of actual work performed. Thus, it is a plausibility check for your uptime.

An example from our own workshop: A device showed a clean 1.28 TH/s in the dashboard, but after four weeks, the best value was 90 million instead of the expected good billion. The hashrate was real, the operating time was not. The power supply sagged under load, the board restarted several times a day, and with each restart, the counter started from zero. After replacing it with a stable 5-volt power supply, the display and the best value matched.

D-Central describes the same behavior in the manual: "Best difficulty resets every time the Bitaxe reboots or the mining session restarts. It is a session-level metric, not an all-time record." If your best value is significantly below the table above, that's not bad luck. It's a clue. We've written down the troubleshooting sequence in the Troubleshooting Guide.

How to correctly interpret the Best Difficulty value in four steps

1. Note the uptime. Read the uptime in AxeOS, not the purchase date. Only uninterrupted uptime counts.
2. Determine the expected value. Compare it with the table above, i.e., 37.7 million per day and 1.13 billion per month at 1.3 TH/s.
3. Interpret the deviation. A best value far below expectations indicates restarts, power supply issues, or Wi-Fi disconnections, not faulty hardware.
4. Ignore the record, maintain stability. A high best value changes your chance of finding the next block by exactly zero percent. Stable cooling and a suitable power supply, however, do change your performed work.

Why is the hurdle lower today than a year ago?

Because network difficulty has been decreasing for months. Its peak over the last twelve months was on October 29, 2025, at 155,973,032,196,071. Today, we are at 127,479,855,693,691, which is 18.3 percent lower. The reason is sober: large operators have shut down capacity or switched to other computing tasks, and less computing power in the network means a lower hurdle for everyone who has remained.

For your living room, this means: the annual chance is about 22 percent better today than at the peak in October. It remains tiny, and I won't sugarcoat it. But it is one of the few metrics in the Bitcoin environment that has moved in favor of small devices. Why it moves at all is explained in our article on Difficulty Adjustment.

A look at the block with which the current retarget began: Block 961,632 brought a total of 3.133361 BTC. Of this, 3.125 BTC was the fixed block reward, the rest, about 0.0084 BTC, came from transaction fees. At an exchange rate of 56,064.70 Euros per BTC (Kraken, August 9, 2026, 06:10 UTC, exchange rate dependent, cross-check CoinGecko 56,038 Euros), the block reward corresponds to about 175,200 Euros.

Bitaxe, Lottery Ticket, or Industrial Miner: Which is the more honest pastime?

Criterion	Bitaxe Gamma 601	Eurojackpot	Industrial Antminer, 3,500 W
Winning Chances per Year	1 in 13,355 at 1.3 TH/s. Winnings if successful: 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees, depending on exchange rate.	1 in 139,838,160 per drawing. The ticket expires after Saturday evening, the device continues to run on Sunday.	Significantly better, about 1 in 64 per year. But it doesn't run in the living room, but in a container.
Running Costs in a Home Office	17 watts, about 149 kWh per year, so 46 to 52 Euros at 31.1 to 35 cents per kWh. About four Euros per month.	Two Euros per tip, for both drawings per week about 208 Euros per year, without counter value at the socket.	About 30,660 kWh per year, so 9,535 to 10,731 Euros. Plus a noise level that ends any conversation.
Drawer-Danger (Boredom Factor)	Low. The best value changes, the temperature breathes with the room, there's something to look at every day.	High. Nothing happens between two draws that you could watch.	No drawer fits. But the device usually leaves the apartment after the first night.
Learning Effect & Blockchain Fascination to Touch	Very high. Anyone who has understood why a best value is not progress has understood Proof of Work.	Virtually none. Six numbers, one result, no model behind it.	Present, but the subject of learning is ventilation technology and electricity tariffs, not cryptography.

„The best value in the dashboard is a certificate for yesterday, not a ticket for tomorrow. Those who accept this operate their device more calmly and for longer.“Dominik Lederer, Founder Polarblocks

Frequent Questions about the Bitaxe Best Value

Can I increase the Best Difficulty value? Only indirectly, through more hashrate and more uninterrupted runtime. There is no setting that directly influences the value.

Why does the best value reset to zero after a restart? Because AxeOS tracks it per session. Some firmware versions also display an all-time high value.

Does my pool show the same best score as my device? Mostly not. The device evaluates each of its own shares, while the pool only sees shares above its minimum difficulty.

Is a best score of one billion good? After four weeks of continuous operation at 1.3 TH/s, it's completely normal. After four days, it would be exceptional.

Sources: mempool.space (Difficulty, Retarget, Block data) · D-Central, AxeOS Complete Guide (Metric behavior) · Kraken and CoinGecko (Price)