In a remarkable turn of events, a solo bitcoin miner, operating with approximately 230 terahashes per second of computing power, successfully validated block 943,411 on Thursday. This achievement earned the miner a substantial reward of 3.139 BTC, valued at around $210,000. Notably, the miner's share of the total network hashrate was so minimal that it is effectively 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. CKpool developer Con Kolivas confirmed the win, highlighting that the miner had a mere 1-in-28,000 chance of finding a block on any given day.
This unexpected win occurred the same week major miners Riot, MARA, and Genius Group announced the sale of over 19,000 BTC from their treasuries. The winning rig, operating at 230 terahashes, represents a negligible 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-scale operation, potentially running under a single roof, rather than a large industrial or cloud-based setup. For perspective, listed miner Riot Platforms alone operates at 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. Solo pools have found just 20 bitcoin blocks over the past 12 months, distributing a combined 62.96 BTC, averaging one solo block every 18.7 days.
This win continues a pattern of unexpected solo mining successes, including a December win by a 270 TH/s miner that overcame 1-in-30,000 daily odds to claim a $284,633 reward, and a November win by a 6 TH/s miner that beat 1-in-180-million odds to land roughly $265,000.