On Thursday, a solo bitcoin miner, operating at approximately 230 terahashes per second, successfully validated block 943,411, earning a reward of 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. Notably, this miner's share of the total network hashrate is so minimal that it is often rounded to zero on most monitoring platforms.

The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, a solo mining pool launched in 2014, which allows operators to retain their full block rewards, minus a 2% fee. Con Kolivas, the developer of CKpool, confirmed the win, highlighting that the miner had roughly a 1-in-28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day. The winning miner, bc1qtt7cr9cxykyp9g4hq47zf5lq9t97cxvq72lun3, with a hashrate of approximately 230 TH, solved the 312th solo block.

At 230 terahashes, the winning rig accounts for only about 0.00002% of bitcoin's estimated total hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second, as of early April. This output is consistent with a small setup of home-scale ASICs running under one roof, rather than a large-scale industrial operation or rented cloud burst. For comparison, listed miner Riot Platforms alone operates over 30 exahashes, roughly 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner. The block marks the 312th solo win on CKpool since its inception and the first since February 28, ending a 33-day drought.

Over the past 12 months, solo pools have found just 20 bitcoin blocks, distributing a combined 62.96 BTC, averaging one solo block every 18.7 days, with the longest gap being 58 days. This win continues a pattern that has been observed throughout this cycle, with miners overcoming remarkable odds to claim significant rewards. In December, a miner running at approximately 270 TH/s cleared 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward. In November, a miner operating at just 6 TH/s, the output of a single old-generation ASIC, beat 1-in-180-million odds to land roughly $265,000.

Additionally, in late February, a miner turned approximately $75 of rented cloud hashrate into a $200,000 reward by directing just 1 petahash at CKpool for a few hours.