A solo Bitcoin miner managed to successfully fulfill the block reward and netting themselves approximately $181,000 dollars, after mining block 860749 on Tuesday
Mining pools, which combine computing power to increase their chances, typically mine Bitcoin blocks, produced roughly every 10 minutes. The reward for successfully mining a block currently stands at 3.125 bitcoin, following a recent halving event earlier this year.
When Bitcoin started up in the late 2,000’s, the difficulty of mining it could be handled by the computing power common to high end gaming computers with strong graphics processing units.
That changed and now the landscape for most cryptocurrency mining is dominated by warehouses and fields full of data farms and servers.
For context, the entire energy requirement for the bitcoin network rivals somewhere between the countries of Argentina and the Netherlands.
In 2024, amid the fierce competition of Bitcoin mining, a solo miner’s unexpected success captured attention. This digital “David vs. Goliath” story showcased the potential rewards of solo mining while emphasizing the role of luck and the rarity of such events.
Solo Bitcoin mining involves an individual miner solving cryptographic puzzles to validate transactions and add blocks to the blockchain, without joining a mining pool.
Unlike pool mining, where participants share rewards based on their contribution, solo miners claim the entire block reward if they successfully mine a block. With the network’s hash rate reaching around 665 exahashes per second (EH/s) in 2024, the odds of solo success remain overwhelmingly slim.
Read more: Americans lost $5.6B to cryptocurrency fraud in 2023: FBI report
Read more: Telegram CEO calls French charges ‘misguided’
Individual miners can succeed against astronomical odds
For example, a miner contributing 10 terahashes per second (TH/s) would only control a tiny fraction of the network’s power, with odds of mining a block roughly one in 10 million. Even with higher hash rates, like 1 petahash per second (PH/s), the odds remain around one in a million. These estimates vary depending on the network difficulty and total hash rate.
How much of a hashrate did this miner command?
Thirty-eight petahashes per second (PH/s), or about 0.00543 per cent of the total network. The odds were around one in a 1000.
The crypto community quickly celebrated the miner’s achievement on X (formerly Twitter). Users such as cryptocurrency data platform coingecko, highlighted the miner’s minuscule hash rate relative to the network’s massive power. This event inspired small-scale miners and fuelled discussions about the viability of solo mining as the network’s difficulty continues to rise.
The solo miner’s victory represents more than just financial success—it embodies Bitcoin’s decentralized mining ethos.
While large operations like Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) and Marathon Digital Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA) dominate much of the network’s hash rate, this event proves that individual miners can still succeed, even against astronomical odds.
However, with only about 290 solo blocks mined historically through platforms like Solo CKPool, such victories have grown rarer as the network expands.
.
Follow Joseph Morton on Twitter
joseph@mugglehead.com
