On Thursday, a solo bitcoin miner, operating with approximately 230 terahashes per second of computing power, successfully validated block 943,411, earning a reward of 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. This achievement is notable given that the miner controls a negligible share of the total network hashrate, which rounds to zero on most dashboards. The miner was connected to solo.ckpool.org, an anonymous 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 on social media, 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/s, solved the 312th solo block. This achievement puts into perspective the miner's relatively small size, representing about 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April. 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 registered 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.
This win continues a pattern that has repeated with surprising regularity, with previous instances including a 270 TH/s miner clearing 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward in December, and a 6 TH/s miner beating 1-in-180-million odds to land roughly $265,000 in November.