Solo Miner Earns 3.175 BTC in Seven Months on CKpool

A solo miner recently made headlines by earning 3.175 BTC as a block reward, utilizing the CKpool network. The miner achieved this feat by solving block 904,989 with an impressive hashrate of 200 petahashes per second (Ph/s). This accomplishment has garnered significant attention within the mining community, as it highlights the potential for substantial returns in solo mining despite the high hashrate requirements and associated costs.

The miner began their Bitcoin mining operations on January 9, 2025, and achieved this block reward in just seven months. The developer and administrator of CKpool, Con Kolivas, congratulated the miner on this milestone. Kolivas noted that a miner with such a high hashrate would typically solve a block approximately once every 35 days, given the current mining difficulty. This suggests that the miner may have been renting hashrate, as the 200 Ph/s is considerably higher than the hashrate of available mining hardware.

The miner solved the 302nd solo block, indicating a high level of competition and the rarity of such an achievement. In response to this event, CKpool has launched a new low-latency solo BTC pool in Brisbane. This pool is designed to service miners in the Oceania and Asia-Pacific regions, addressing latency and performance issues that can affect mining efficiency. The new pool will operate independently from the main CK pool and the EU solo BTC mining pool, ensuring optimal performance for its users. Blocks generated from the AU BTC pool will be propagated between other sibling pools and will carry the same signature as the main CK pool, with the prefix “ckpoolau.”

Kolivas predicted that the AU pool will likely be dominated by Bitaxe mining rigs, which have an average hashrate ranging between 0.4–1.2 Terahash (TH/s). However, he also noted that the pool may have the lowest hashrate compared to other solo CK pools due to the high electricity costs. The average cost of residential electricity is significantly higher than the average residential electricity rate in the United States. Despite the high costs, the daily electricity expenses for running a Bitaxe solo miner are relatively low. However, the chances of solving a Bitcoin block and winning the mining fees of 3.175 BTC are extremely low, estimated to take 14,075 years based on calculations from SoloChance. This underscores the challenges and risks associated with solo mining, even with a high hashrate.

The launch of the new AU pool by CKpool is a strategic move to cater to the growing demand for low-latency mining pools in the region. It also reflects the developer's commitment to providing efficient and reliable mining services to the community. The pool's separation from the main CK pool and the EU solo BTC mining pool ensures that miners in the Oceania and Asia-Pacific regions can benefit from optimized performance and reduced latency. This development is likely to attract more miners to the pool, further enhancing its hashrate and competitiveness in the mining landscape.

The event underscores the possibility of high rewards through solo mining despite the inherent challenges and costs, sparking broader interest in participating in hashpower marketplaces. The mining community viewed the win as a rare statistical outlier, prompting discussions about the current state of solo mining and its potential. While seen as an anomaly, the event reinforces Bitcoin's decentralized nature and highlights the opportunities within mining. Insights suggest a growing interest in hashpower marketplaces and the shifting dynamics within the Bitcoin mining ecosystem. The event may influence discussions on mining expenses and electricity costs, especially in countries with high operational fees.