Solo Bitcoin Miner Hits Jackpot With $350,000 Block Reward

A solo Bitcoin miner has achieved an extraordinary feat by successfully mining an entire block and earning nearly $350,000 in Bitcoin rewards. The miner, operating through the CKpool solo mining pool, used a rig producing 2.3 petahashes per second (PH/s) to solve block 903883, according to mining data from Mempool Space. This remarkable accomplishment highlights the potential for small-scale miners to strike it big despite the low odds involved.

The miner's success is particularly noteworthy given the odds against them. The CKpool administrator explained that a miner operating at 2.3 PH/s has only about a 1 in 2,800 chance of solving a block on any given day, or roughly one success every eight years on average. At current network difficulty, that’s just a 0.004% chance per day. The solo miner’s block yield included a reward of 3.173 BTC, valued at approximately $349,028 at the time. While the miner’s exact hardware setup remains unclear, experts believe it likely involved several older-generation ASIC rigs combined to reach the modest hashrate of 2.3 PH/s.

By contrast, smaller hobbyist machines like Bitaxe or USB-based NerdMiner units produce only terahashes or kilohashes per second, making their chances of hitting a full block effectively negligible. For solo miners aiming to mine a block every month, an estimated 166,000 terahashes per second, equivalent to about 500 Antminer S21 Hydro machines, would be required, a setup costing millions of dollars. Yet the latest lucky miner’s success proves that, in solo mining, probability can sometimes favor even modest operators.

The win follows similar solo miner victories earlier this year. In February, a solo miner hit block 883,181 for over $300,000 in rewards, and another solo miner mined block 899,826 in early June, earning roughly $330,000. Meanwhile, major industrial Bitcoin mining firms reported lower output in June. The companies scaled back operations to sidestep peak demand charges during the state’s expensive summer electricity periods. This highlights the contrasting fortunes between solo miners and industrial operations, with solo miners occasionally achieving significant wins despite their smaller scale.

This event underscores the unpredictable nature of Bitcoin mining and the potential for small-scale miners to achieve substantial rewards. The success of the solo miner serves as a reminder that, despite the dominance of large-scale mining operations, there is still room for individual miners to make a significant impact. The rarity of such events adds to their allure, making them a testament to the resilience and determination of solo miners in the competitive world of cryptocurrency mining.