Realistically, larger pools mine multiple blocks per day and can pay out daily. 21 even came up with a scheme to front BTC to the device and make it up later, but that's excessively complex IMO.
Re:Why so many things cost exactly zero
by konschubert on Saturday January 18, 2020 @07:04PM
(#22088336)
you can join a mining pool.
But mining once cent worth of bitcoin would cost you multiple dollars on a CPU.
I don't think you can mine $0.01 worth of bitcoin. Most of the time, you'll lose the race to find the correct hash collision and so you'll end up with nothing. Other times, you'll win and get the reward for the block which is 12.5 BTC at the moment (IIRC). People do join collectives to pool their mining power, but there isn't predictability to when the collective will end up with a coin. If you're looking to set up a web server, you don't want to be waiting days or weeks or whatever while your collective tries to win a block. Theoretically, you could buy a lot of computing power and always get unlucky.
So you can't really get a penny of bitcoin via mining.