On Thursday, a solo bitcoin miner, operating with approximately 230 terahashes per second of computational power, successfully validated block 943,411 and earned a reward of 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. Notably, this miner controlled a negligible share of the total network hashrate, which is barely perceptible on most monitoring 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. CKpool developer Con Kolivas confirmed the win on social media, highlighting that the miner had a roughly 1-in-28,000 chance of discovering 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 about 0.00002% of bitcoin's total estimated hashrate of roughly 1 zetahash per second as of early April. This output is consistent with a small setup of home-scale ASICs operating under a single roof, rather than a rented cloud burst or industrial operation.
For context, listed miner Riot Platforms alone operates over 30 exahashes, which is roughly 130,000 times the hashrate of Thursday's winner. The block represents 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 discovered just 20 bitcoin blocks, distributing a combined 62.96 BTC, which translates to roughly one solo block every 18.7 days on average, with the longest gap being 58 days. This win continues a pattern that has repeated with surprising regularity throughout this cycle. In December, a roughly 270 TH/s miner overcame 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 earn roughly $265,000. Additionally, in late February, a miner converted approximately $75 of rented cloud hashrate into a $200,000 reward by directing just 1 petahash at CKpool for a few hours.