Bitcoin Solo Miner Nets $200,000 Reward in Rare Achievement Amid Rising Network Competition

Bitcoin Solo Miner Nets $200,000 Reward in Rare Achievement Amid Rising Network Competition

A solo Bitcoin miner recently achieved the remarkable feat of independently solving a Bitcoin block, earning the entire block reward of 3.125 Bitcoins. This event, announced on April 28 by Con Kolivas, a software engineer and administrator of the solo mining pool ckpool, on the social media platform X, represents only the 282nd time a solo block has been solved in Bitcoin’s 14-year history.

The miner’s success is especially noteworthy given the scale of their operation. At the time of solving block 841,286, the miner commanded a substantial hashing power of approximately 120 petahashes per second (PH/s), or 0.12 exahashes per second (EH/s). Over the preceding week, the miner averaged about 12 PH/s, which equates to roughly 0.02% of Bitcoin’s total network hash rate.

This solo block was part of the Bitcoin ecosystem following the recent “halving” event at block 840,000 on April 20, which reduced the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. At the time of the event, the reward for block 841,286 was valued at approximately $200,000.

Kolivas suggested that the miner might have shifted from pooled to solo mining post-halving, likely due to insufficient returns on electricity costs in pooled settings. This switch could also indicate intermittent engagement in solo mining or renting substantial hash power for brief periods.

The rarity of solo mining success in the Bitcoin network—only occurring 282 times out of over 841,300 blocks—underscores the exceptional nature of this achievement. As Bitcoin’s price has risen, so too has the popularity and competitive intensity of mining, evidenced by a significant increase in the overall network hash rate and mining difficulty. Just last month, the average network hash rate reached a historic peak of 728 EH/s on April 23, as per BitInfoCharts, marking a more than 90% increase over the past year.

The backdrop of increasing mining difficulty makes the recent solo mining accomplishment even more remarkable, highlighting the immense challenge and rarity of such an event in the current Bitcoin mining landscape.