One-Tap Bitaxe Connect from Your Wallet
Configuring your Bitaxe directly from a mobile wallet
Hey, I’m Anipy, a software engineer working on self-custodial bitcoin wallet mobile apps. Last month I finally bought a Bitaxe. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a small bitcoin mining device that you can run at home. People call it a “lottery miner” because the chances of actually mining a block are super low, but it’s fun to run and it helps you understand how mining works.
The thing is, when I got mine, the setup was a bit confusing. I had to watch several Youtube videos just to figure out how to configure it. The hardest part was the pool configuration. You need to enter something called a stratum host, a port number, and then a bitcoin address where your rewards would go if you somehow win the lottery and mine a block. For someone like me who understands this stuff, it’s manageable. For a regular person who just bought this thing hoping to learn about bitcoin, it’s basically impossible.
So I thought, why can’t we make this easier?
The idea
Most people who buy a Bitaxe probably already have a bitcoin wallet on their phone. Maybe Blue Wallet, or Green, or in my case Bull Bitcoin. These wallets already know how to generate bitcoin addresses. They already understand bitcoin. So why make the user manually copy-paste addresses and configure pools?
What if there was just a “Connect Bitaxe” button in the wallet settings?
That’s what I built for Bull Bitcoin mobile app. Here’s how it works now:
You go to Settings and tap “Bitaxe Connect”
You enter the IP address of your Bitaxe (you can see this on the device screen)
You tap Connect
The wallet automatically takes your bitcoin address and configures everything
Done
That’s it. No stratum URLs. No port numbers. No confusion about where your funds would go. The wallet handles all of that in the background.
How it actually works
When you hit connect, the app does a few things automatically:
First, it connects to your Bitaxe and reads the current configuration. Most Bitaxes come pre-configured with Public Pool settings from the manufacturer, which is great because Public Pool is a transparent, open source solo mining pool. So we don’t change any of that.
Second, it gets a receiving address from your wallet. By default it reuses the last unused address so your wallet doesn’t get cluttered with new addresses every time.
Third, it updates just the bitcoin address in the pool configuration. The username format becomes something like “your-bitcoin-address.bitaxe-hostname”. Everything else stays the same.
Finally, it restarts the device so the changes take effect.
The whole thing takes maybe 30 seconds, and most of that is just the device restarting. Compare that to watching YouTube tutorials and trying to understand what a stratum port even is.
What about pool choice?
You might be wondering, what if I want to use a different pool? Or what’s the difference between solo mining and pool mining anyway?
Here’s the thing. Most Bitaxe devices ship with Public Pool already configured, which is a transparent solo mining pool. Solo mining means if you mine a block, you get the full reward. No sharing, no pool fees. The tradeoff is the odds are extremely low.
For someone just starting out, this is perfect. You don’t need to understand the differences between pools, or research which one to use, or figure out ports and URLs. The manufacturer already made a sensible choice. All you need to do is tell it where to send the money if you win.
If you’re more experienced and want to use a different pool like Braiins or Ocean, you can still do that manually through the Bitaxe web interface (AxeOs). But for the 90% of people who just want to plug it in and start learning, the one-click setup handles everything.
Why this matters
I think this is the kind of thing that makes bitcoin more accessible. The Bitaxe is already a great educational tool. It’s affordable, it’s open source, and it gets people interested in how mining actually works. But the setup process was keeping people away.
Now someone can buy a Bitaxe, download Bull Bitcoin, and be mining to their own self-custodial wallet in under a minute. No tutorials needed. No technical knowledge required. Just plug it in and connect.
And when they eventually mine a block (which realistically might never happen, but that’s okay), the full reward goes directly to their wallet. No pool holding their funds. No trust required.
What’s next
I built this as a proof of concept and it’s working really well. The implementation includes a minimal dashboard that shows your hashrate, temperature, and connection status. It auto-refreshes every few seconds so you can see that your device is running properly.
I’m planning to submit a pull request to the official Bull Bitcoin repository if there’s interest from the team and the community. If you’re a Bull Bitcoin user and think this would be useful, let me know.
I’m also writing up the technical documentation so other wallet developers can implement this in their apps. It’s really not complicated, just a few API calls to the Bitaxe esp-miner. If we can get this into multiple wallets, it becomes a standard feature that Bitaxe owners can expect, regardless of which wallet they use.
If you’re a wallet developer interested in adding this, or if you have feedback on the implementation, feel free to reach out. The more wallets that support easy Bitaxe setup, the better it is for everyone.