Monthly Update: Small & Solo Bitcoin Mining – January 2026 Edition The small & solo mining network share (90d SMA) continued sliding in January, now sitting around ~1.8% after the drop from ~2% in December. Monthly blocks found remained soft, similar to late 2025 levels. The chart shows this short-term weakness against the powerful multi-year upward trend since early 2023. Despite the recent pullback, the decentralization story is alive and well – more and more capable home miners are coming online. Folks upgrading from ~1.3 TH/s Bitaxe units to stronger setups like FutureBit's Apollo series (2–3 TH/s) or PowerMiningFarm's NerdQaxe++ (4.8 TH/s) keep improving their solo chances step by step.

This chart is a lesson in market deception. One line offers a dopamine hit (+264.9%). The other offers a discipline test (-19.1%). Humans suffer from Action Bias. We instinctively equate "motion" with "progress." If an asset isn't moving, our survival brain assumes it’s broken or dead. But in markets, volatility is often a distraction, while stillness is where the structural work happens. Bitcoin isn't stagnant; it’s digesting. It is absorbing massive institutional shifts and ETF inflows without the fireworks. It’s a transfer of ownership from the impatient to the convicted. Chasing the vertical line feels good today. Surviving the flat line pays off for the decade. Stagnation is the gatekeeper.

You run a Bitcoin node but no mining hardware yet? Want to dip your toes into mining? Over the past week, I built a simple @Umbrel ☂️ Community App Store app: Node Miner – easy CPU Bitcoin mining right on your Umbrel node! Powered by cpuminer-multi: Connect to pools (try @Public-Pool for quick feedback), set CPU percentage (10-50% recceomended to avoid system overload), monitor hashrate & stats live. CPU Mining is completely unprofitable! This was built for fun and learning! I’d love your feedback and improvement suggestions – drop them here in the replies or open an issue on GitHub!

Over the last 2 days, Bitcoin issuance dropped by ~28% to just 325 BTC (~104 blocks), falling well below the 450 BTC(144 blocks) target due to extreme winter storms in the US. Miners seem to be powering down to stabilize the energy grid.

Bitcoin’s decentralization is getting stronger, quiet and steady. The share of home and small-scale miners has climbed to ~2.5% of the global hashrate in just 18 months. This isn't just noise. It is a structural shift powered by hobby miners.

The market is making a clear choice over the last 30 days. Real Market Data: 🟦 Tesla (Hardware/Robotics): +13.5% 🟧 Bitcoin: -4.4% 🟪 Microsoft (Software): -6.0% 🟥 Nvidia (Chips): -8.0% Capital is rotating.

Blocks Full, Fees Down. How does that even work? #Bitcoin blocks: >150% utilized vs. legacy 1MB baseline (SegWit magic since 2017). Daily fees? Just ~2.65 BTC today. I plotted this 2011–today view

Common wisdom says: "Miners who filter spam lose revenue." Because they leave fee-paying transactions on the table. I checked the on-chain reality (Avg Fees per Block, last 30 days): 🟦 Ocean (Filtered): ~0.0222 BTC (Fees) 🟧 AntPool (Unfiltered): ~0.0211 BTC (Fees) Surprise: Ocean actually earns slightly more in fees per block than the unfiltered competition. Quality > Quantity? Filtering the blockchain doesn't seem to hurt the bottom line.

We are witnessing a complete restructuring of Bitcoin's ownership over the last 100 days. The data reveals a brutal truth about market psychology: 1. October (FOMO): Retail (<1 BTC) chased the price aggressively. Whales distributed into strength. 2. December (Fear): Retail is capitulating at the bottom. Whales (>1k BTC) are absorbing the liquidity. 📉 Retail Flow: -80,000 BTC (Panic Selling) 📈 Whale Flow: +110,000 BTC (High Conviction) Wealth is transferring from the impatient to the sovereign.

Yesterday, we saw that the Knots/Ocean "rebellion" is only ~1.4% of the network Hashrate. But are these miners actually filtering "spam" (large inscriptions) from their blocks? I analyzed the average transaction size of blocks mined in the last 30 days. The difference is undeniable: 🟦 Ocean (Filtered): 572 Bytes 🟧 AntPool (Unfiltered): 669 Bytes AntPool's blocks contain transactions that are, on average, ~17% larger. This confirms that Ocean is actively filtering out the largest data blobs. They are walking the talk.

The debate around Bitcoin Knots, block filtering, and "spam" is loud, but how much Hashrate is actually enforcing stricter rules on-chain right now? I queried the on-chain data for the last 30 days to find out. The result is stark: 🟦 Knots / Ocean: ~1.4% 🟧 Core / Others: ~98.6% The on-chain vote remains clear. For now.

Overlayed IBIT volume with whale activity (>10 BTC). The correlation is tighter than I expected. Whenever institutional volume spikes, native whales aggressively compete for the same coins. They aren't selling to the ETFs. They are front-running them.

BTC price is chopping, but the chain is awake. I queried all transactions >10 BTC over the last 30 days to see if the big players are stepping back. They aren't. Transaction count for whales remains elevated despite the red candles. Retail gets bored. Smart money gets busy. #Bitcoin

The myth that #Bitcoin is more unequally distributed than the traditional financial system is false. When adjusting for exchange wallets, Bitcoin's Gini coefficient is roughly 0.82. The global fiat system scores worse, around 0.88 according to the UBS Global Wealth Report. The key difference is the trend. Fiat wealth continues to centralize over time. Bitcoin is distributing. In 2012, whales controlled 62% of the supply; today, that figure is down to 34%. One system is concentrating, the other is dispersing.