In an extraordinary feat, a solo Bitcoin miner managed to mine a Bitcoin block (818,588) independently, claiming the entire block reward of 6.25 BTC plus network fees (0.637 BTC). This extraordinary endeavor resulted in profits around R$1.25 million.
The miner achieved this milestone through the Solo CK pool, a unique mining pool that deviates from the conventional method of evenly distributing rewards among participating miners. In the Solo CK pool, when a solo miner finds a block, the entire reward goes exclusively to that miner.
This particular miner had a computational power of 2 PH/s (petahashes per second), and statistically, a miner of this size would, on average, solve a Bitcoin block only once every five years. The operational costs for a 2 PH/s operation were estimated to be at least US$30,000, according to the pool's creator, X Con Kolivas.
The lucky miner's address now holds a balance of 13.49801219 BTC, equivalent to R$2.4 million. This incident highlights the occasional triumphs of smaller-scale miners who, despite limited computing capacity, manage to succeed against the odds.
This is not the first instance of a solo miner achieving such a feat. In August, a solo Bitcoin miner with 1 PH/s in computational power won R$800,000 in BTC, defying the statistical odds. The Solo CK pool continues to offer opportunities for smaller miners to participate in Bitcoin mining.
Individual miners, while facing resource constraints compared to large industrial-scale mining pools, occasionally demonstrate remarkable success stories in the world of cryptocurrency mining.
