This illegal Bitaxe clone is quietly dominating Asia.

Today I had lunch with the guy behind it 👇

He’s a young bitcoin entrepreneur from Shenzhen, China.

Quiet, humble—but running a serious operation: large-scale self-mining, hosting, and full-scale manufacturing of mining hardware and spare parts.

He’s been in the space since 2017.

Genuinely believes in bitcoin’s mission.

LuckyMiner started as a hobby in late 2023.

He said he wanted to help more people get into mining—not really to make a profit.

But in early 2024 the demand exploded.

Thousands sold.

BREAKING THE LICENSE.

Bitaxe is open source under CERN-OHL-S-2.0—which means any modifications must be published.

So why do it?

I asked him directly. He didn’t get angry or defensive. He said:

1️⃣ Retail customers in Asia don’t care about open source, and the Bitaxe brand isn’t suited for the local market

2️⃣ His team is juggling too many projects—releasing modifications is low priority. Their time is too valuable

Not great reasons—but they felt honest.

👉 Legit Bitaxes:

They now manufacture open-source Bitaxes too—but only for B2B clients, fully license-compliant. LuckyMiners are sold direct to retail customers.

👉 Copying Braiins:

They copied us too—and admitted it to my face. But that’s a story for next time. Follow me so you don’t miss it 😆

What’s next?

As sales kept growing, they added a Litecoin version earlier this year.

And they plan to keep expanding—with more form factors and higher production volumes.

But he says chip availability is the biggest bottleneck.

CHIPS ARE THE PROBLEM.

Everywhere.

Or rather—not having chips available for purchase is the story here for me.

Hope we find a solution.

Anyways…

I don’t support his decisions.

But I have to admit—he’s a really nice guy, bitcoiner at heart, and I appreciated his honest answer and perspective on the Asian market.

Now you know the story behind the most controversial mini-miner on the market.

Curious to hear your thoughts.