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. Notably, this miner's share of the total network hashrate was so minimal that it is effectively rounded to zero on most tracking 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. The win was confirmed by CKpool developer Con Kolivas, who highlighted that the miner had roughly a 1-in-28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day.
This achievement marks the 312th solo block found on CKpool since its inception and ends a 33-day drought, with the winning rig representing about 0.00002% of bitcoin's estimated total hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April. For perspective, listed miner Riot Platforms alone operates over 30 exahashes, which is approximately 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner.
The solo pool's success continues a pattern that has emerged with surprising regularity, with previous instances including a 270 TH/s miner clearing 1-in-30,000 daily odds in December to claim a $284,633 reward, and a 6 TH/s miner overcoming 1-in-180-million odds in November to land roughly $265,000.