Another Lucky Solo Miner Nabs $160,000 Bitcoin Block Reward

With a mere 1 PH/s in hash power, the lucky miner enjoys vastly fewer resources than what major industrial-scale Bitcoin mining pools boast.

By Andrew Asmakov

Image: Shutterstock

An extremely lucky Bitcoin miner has just landed the full 6.25 Bitcoin reward after beating the odds to solve block 803,821.

The event occurred on August 18, with the miner using the Solo CKpool mining service.

In fiat terms, the miner, identified as bc1q2za4ejga366sn288273pty8trasn5zs4y9hqg6, earned roughly $160,000 in current prices minus 2% fee, which is kept by the mining pool.

Con Kolivas, who oversees the Solo CKpool, congratulated the winner, suggesting that the miner operated with a hash power of approximately 1 PH/s (petahash per second), which is significantly lower than what major industrial-scale Bitcoin mining pools boast.

While most miners have computing power capacities in the Exahash (EH/s) range–Foundry, for example, the largest Bitcoin mining pool, currently boasts as much as 123.64 EH/s–an individual miner equipped with only a few Petahash finds themselves at a gross disadvantage.

At the current Bitcoin mining difficulty, which stands close to an all-time high of 52.39 trillion, “a miner of this size would only solve a block solo on average once every 7 years,” according to Kolivas.

He also said that the lucky miner was possibly using about ten Antminer S17 Bitcoin mining machines to solve the mathematical puzzle and earn the reward.

Bitcoin miner beats the odds

At the heart of the Bitcoin network lies a process called mining—a crucial mechanism that verifies transactions and secures the network, as well as introduces new Bitcoin into circulation.

It's a computational endeavor that harnesses the power of high-performance computers to solve complex mathematical puzzles. Miners compete to solve these puzzles, with the winner getting the chance to add a new block of transactions to the blockchain.

Despite the odds, the likelihood of a solo Bitcoin miner occasionally producing a valid hash still exists though. This is where Solo CKpool has staked their business, catering to miners who possess "older/inefficient mining rigs unlikely to yield rewards through standard mining but still wish to engage in mining as a form of lottery."

This year alone, individual miners using Solo CKpool already found as many as ten blocks, according to BTC.com, with the latest instance making it a total of 277 validated blocks in the history of the pool.