A solo Bitcoin miner achieved a remarkable milestone by obtaining a Bitcoin block reward of 3.13 BTC, which is currently valued at approximately $282,000. This achievement was realized through the use of Solo CKPool, a specialized service intended to assist independent miners in successfully winning Bitcoin blocks.
The odds of such a win are notably low, estimated to be around 1 in 30,000, as highlighted by the administrator of CKPool. The administrator took to X, celebrating the miner identified by the pseudonym 1Ng9~VoQz, who utilized a computational power of 270TH for this remarkable feat, marking the successful resolution of the 311th solo block.
Utilizing Solo CKPool, miners are required to pay a 2% fee, which in this case amounts to around 0.062 BTC, or roughly $5,734, whenever they successfully mine a block. This fee structure allows miners to engage without the financial burden of operating a complete, high-cost Bitcoin mining rig.
This notable win is part of a trend, as Solo CKPool miners have secured four block victories within the past three weeks. The last such reward prior to this streak was recorded in September. Collectively, miners operating through Solo CKPool have now accumulated a total of 5,553 BTC, which translates to about $511 million at current market prices.
Despite these successes, experts caution against the reliance on solo mining, likening it to a lottery in terms of the unpredictability of success. This analogy is particularly poignant given the accelerating difficulty of solo mining, linked to Bitcoin’s rising hash rate, which currently averages over 1 ZH/S, a significant increase from approximately 736 EH/S just a year ago.
Mining Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies demands substantial computational resources for solving complex algorithms, incurring high energy costs and requiring specialized hardware, which can be quite expensive. In exchange for their efforts, miners receive newly minted Bitcoin, currently set at 3.125 BTC, along with transaction fees from the associated blocks.
Shifts in the cryptocurrency mining landscape have been noted, with some publicly traded companies opting to pivot their focus towards the growing demands of artificial intelligence computation, even abandoning Bitcoin mining entirely. A recent example includes Bitfarms, which announced the cessation of its Bitcoin mining operations following a $46 million loss to redirect its resources toward the AI sector.
Currently, Bitcoin remains stable in the market, recently trading at $90,062 as interest and scrutiny in the cryptocurrency landscape continue to evolve.
