Lucky solo bitcoin miner beats the odds to win $350,000 block reward
Quick Take A solo bitcoin miner beat the odds — around 1 in 2,800 per day — to solve a block and take home the total subsidy and transaction fee reward. The bitcoin miner earned $348,948 for mining block 903,883 using CKpool in a solo mining configuration.
A solo bitcoin miner beat substantial odds to solve a block and take home the full subsidy and transaction fee reward late Thursday.
The miner collected a total of 3.173 BTC ($348,948) for mining block 903,883, using solo bitcoin-mining software from CKpool, according to the Bitcoin explorer Mempool . This comprised 3.125 BTC in block subsidy rewards ($343,709) and 0.048 BTC ($5,239) in transaction fees.
"Congratulations to miner bc1q~9sj3 with 2.3PH for solving block number 301 on the EU solo.ckpool.org!" CKpool developer Con Kolivas posted on X. "A miner of this size has about a 1 in 2,800 chance of solving a block every day, or once every 8 years on average."
The solo miner's hashpower is the equivalent of 0.00026% of the Bitcoin network's total estimated hashrate of 874 EH/s (874,000 PH/s) on July 3, per Mempool's data . Leading public bitcoin miner, MARA , has a hashrate of approximately 57.3 EH/s, according to its latest disclosure . Bitcoin's hashrate measures the total computational power dedicated to the network by miners.
Bitcoin network hashrate. Image: Mempool .
Why solo miners try their luck
Smaller bitcoin miners usually join shared pools to earn steady, proportional rewards since solo mining has an extremely low chance of winning a block. Nevertheless, some individuals attempt solo pools in the hope of securing the full block reward, thereby avoiding fees and potentially winning a substantial, lottery-like prize despite the odds.
However, as Kolivas points out, it's not the first time a solo miner has picked up the entirety of the block rewards, nor one of the luckiest. For example, a solo bitcoin miner with a hashrate of just 126 TH/s beat odds of 1 in 1.3 million to mine a block in 2022 — picking up around $260,000 in rewards at the time.
Most recently, a solo miner with a weekly hashrate of 6.1 PH/s earned $327,625 on June 5. The caveat then was that the miner temporarily increased their compute power as high as 261 PH/s to mine the Bitcoin block — suggesting they likely rented additional hashrate to better their odds of earning the block reward. Still, it remains a relatively rare event.
There was no sign of rented hashpower this time around, though, in Kolivas' view. "They'd been mining consistently with 2.3PH for quite a while, so I doubt it, but anything's possible," he said, responding to a query if the miner was using hashrate bought from NiceHash again.
However, that doesn't mean the solo miner is a very small or cheap operation either, with their 2.3 PH/s equivalent to around 11 Antminer S21s, with a retail value of $3,780 per unit, according to manufacturer Bitmain.
Disclaimer: The content of this article solely reflects the author's opinion and does not represent the platform in any capacity. This article is not intended to serve as a reference for making investment decisions.
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