An individual miner achieved a rare feat by solving a Bitcoin block and collecting the entire associated reward. The event occurred late on Thursday evening, with the miner validating block 927,474 via the solo mining platform CKpool. The total reward collected amounts to 3.133 BTC, equivalent to approximately $284,633. This amount breaks down to 3.125 BTC from the block subsidy (the new issuance) and 0.008 BTC from transaction fees.
The unexpected gain: a chance of 1 in 30,000 per day
The developer of CKpool, Con Kolivas, quickly confirmed the information, specifying that the miner was using a hashing power (hashrate) of 270 TH/s, spread over three mining machines, which is equivalent to about three Bitmain Antminer S19 ASICs.
Against the overall computational power of the network, which was about 1.15 ZH/s on December 11, this solo miner's hashrate represented a tiny fraction: only 0.00002 %. Con Kolivas also highlighted the rarity of this success, estimating the chances of block resolution for a miner of this size at 1 in 30,000 per day.
The bet of solo mining against pooled mining
For the majority of Bitcoin mining participants, it is therefore common to join shared pools. This strategy allows small miners to receive rewards proportional to their hashrate, thus ensuring a more stable and predictable income stream.
However, solo pools attract a segment of miners who prefer to try their luck at winning the entire block reward, although the odds are extremely low. It is a lottery-type bet that, if successful, offers a substantial gain.
This event is not isolated. Last month, another solo miner, with an even more modest hashrate (6 TH/s), had already defied odds of about 1 in 180 million to validate a block, then pocketing around 265,000 $. These sporadic successes remind us of the distributed nature of the network and the persistence of the opportunity for lucky individual miners.
