Korean Lotto vs. Bitcoin Mining
1. Introduction: Two Kinds of “Luck”
Both the Korean Lotto and Bitcoin mining rely heavily on chance — one uses numbered balls, the other uses digital computation. While they seem unrelated, both involve extremely low probabilities of winning.
The Lotto gives players a fixed chance of hitting the jackpot with each ticket, while Bitcoin mining offers a statistical chance of finding a valid block through immense computing effort. In this lesson, we’ll compare how rare these events truly are, using approximate probabilities (values rounded for simplicity).
2. The Korean Lotto: One Draw per Week
In South Korea, the Lotto is drawn once a week. Each ticket costs 1,000 KRW and allows the player to choose 6 numbers out of 45. To win the 1st prize, all six numbers must match exactly with the drawn numbers.
Mathematically, the odds of selecting the correct 6-number combination are:
1 in 8,145,060 (approx.)
This means if you buy one ticket per week, your chance of hitting the jackpot is roughly 0.0000123%. If you purchase five tickets, your odds increase proportionally:
1 in 1,629,012 (approx.)
Even so, you’re still astronomically unlikely to win — you’d need to play millions of times before statistically expecting a single win. So, in essence, the Korean Lotto is a game of pure chance, where luck is the only factor.
3. Bitcoin Mining: A Digital Lottery
Bitcoin mining might sound like a technical process, but conceptually, it’s also a lottery system — one that operates billions of times per second.
Miners compete to find a valid hash, a 64-character code that meets strict mathematical criteria set by the Bitcoin network. Each attempt involves generating a new Nonce (random number) and testing whether it produces a valid result. The chance of “winning” — that is, finding a hash that qualifies — depends on your hash rate, or how many attempts your machine can make each second.
Unlike Lotto tickets, miners can try trillions of times per second, but because the target difficulty is extremely low, the probability of success remains microscopic.
Let’s break it down by hardware type.
4. CPU Mining (Intel i7-11700K Example)
A modern desktop CPU like Intel i7-11700K can perform roughly 368 MH/s, which means it can make 368 million hash attempts per second.
Even with nonstop operation, mining 24 hours a day for an entire week, your probability of finding a valid Bitcoin block is approximately:
1 in 2.7 billion (approx.)
In other words, if you relied solely on a CPU, your odds of mining a block within a week are even smaller than winning the Lotto hundreds of times in a row. For practical purposes, CPU mining is no longer feasible — it’s like buying one Lotto ticket in a game where billions are sold every second.
5. GPU Mining (NVIDIA RTX 3080 Example)
A powerful graphics card such as the NVIDIA RTX 3080 can achieve around 1.0 GH/s, equivalent to 1 billion hashes per second — roughly three times faster than the i7 CPU.
Despite this boost, the weekly probability of successfully mining one Bitcoin block is still only about:
1 in 1 billion (approx.)
That’s an improvement compared to CPU mining, but still far less likely than winning the Korean Lotto. It shows that even advanced gaming GPUs are no match for Bitcoin’s global mining competition.
6. ASIC Mining (Specialized Hardware)
For serious miners, the only realistic option is a Bitcoin ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) — a machine built solely for SHA-256 hashing.
Modern ASICs can reach performance levels around 140 TH/s, which is 140 trillion hashes per second, making them millions of times faster than standard CPUs.
Even with such staggering power, the odds of finding a valid block in one week are approximately:
1 in 7,220 (approx.)
That’s finally within a human-comprehensible range — though still a long shot. However, these machines consume massive amounts of electricity, producing high energy costs that often exceed potential rewards.
Without access to cheap power or large-scale operations, solo mining even with an ASIC is like buying a lottery ticket every few minutes — expensive and uncertain.
7. Summary of Approximate Odds
| System | Hash Rate | Weekly Probability of Success | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Korean Lotto (1 ticket) | — | 1 in 8,145,060 | Drawn once per week |
| Korean Lotto (5 tickets) | — | 1 in 1,629,012 | Slightly higher odds |
| CPU (Intel i7-11700K) | 368 MH/s | 1 in ~2.7 billion | Impractical |
| GPU (RTX 3080) | 1.0 GH/s | 1 in ~1 billion | Still highly unlikely |
| ASIC (140 TH/s) | 140 trillion H/s | 1 in ~7,220 | Feasible but costly (electricity) |
All probabilities are approximate values based on current Bitcoin network difficulty.
8. Final Thoughts: Lotto Luck vs. Digital Labor
The comparison reveals a fascinating truth:
- The Korean Lotto depends purely on luck — you buy a ticket and wait for the draw.
- Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, depends on digital effort — machines perform billions of random trials, hoping for one lucky result.
Yet, in both systems, the chance of success is extremely small. The difference is that mining consumes energy, while Lotto only consumes money.
In essence:
- Lotto is a human lottery of numbered balls.
- Bitcoin is a machine lottery of random hashes.
Both reward persistence and probability, but only one — Bitcoin mining — also secures a global financial network in the process.
You can view the original blog post in Korean at the links below: