A solo Bitcoin miner has pulled off what many miners would consider a near-impossible feat, mining a single block worth more than $370,000 in rewards. The miner, working through a solo mining pool called Solo CK, successfully added block 910,440 to the Bitcoin blockchain. Although it appears to be a normal mining block, the circumstances surrounding this achievement are significant, given the challenges of solo mining and the competition in Bitcoin mining.
Massive Reward From Block 910,440
The successful block came with a reward of 3.125 BTC, the standard payout after the most recent halving in 2024, and an additional 0.012 BTC in transaction fees, bringing the total to 3.137 BTC. At the time of mining, this was valued at approximately $362,376. According to data from Mempool.space, the block contained nearly 5,000 transactions (4,913 transactions to be exact). Depending on Bitcoin’s price fluctuations at the time, estimates from Mempool placed the final value of the reward at the current time of writing at $371,576.
The most interesting thing about this jackpot is its improbability. According to Con Kolivas, administrator of the Solo CK pool, even with a substantial computing power of 9 PetaHashes per second, the miner only had about a one in 800 chance of mining a block within a single day.
In fact, the probability of success every 10 minutes with one petahash of hashing power is closer to one in 650,000. This is why most miners join large mining pools, where rewards are split but payouts are more consistent. Solo mining is free from pool fees but comes with long stretches of no income and an exceptionally low chance of success.
The Difficulty Of Solo Mining
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has been trending upwards in recent months in tandem with Bitcoin’s price action reaching new highs. According to data from CoinWarz, the Bitcoin mining difficulty is at an all-time peak of 129.44 Terahash following steady gains of 2.51% over the past 30 days and 6.39% in the last 90 days.
This steady increase in the Bitcoin mining difficulty is due to the increase in large industrial farms with fleets of ASICs that push smaller operators to the sidelines. Hence, most miners choose to join pools and sacrifice a huge chunk of their potential payouts.
Solo mining, by contrast, comes with the slim possibility of capturing an entire block reward at fewer intervals. For instance, data from Mempool.space shows that the Solo CK miner only mined one block in the past week. Bitcoin blocks are mined at an interval of 10 minutes, but the miner has been able to successfully mine a block only 15 times in the past 12 months.
Featured image from Pixabay, chart from Tradingview.com
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