Solo Bitcoin miner wins the 3.125 BTC lottery, solving valid block

A single Bitcoin miner has defied the odds by solving a Bitcoin block alone, netting them the full 3.125 Bitcoin (BTC) block reward.

On April 29, software engineer and administrator from the solo mining pool ckpool, Con Kolivas, posted to X that a miner had solved the 282nd solo block in Bitcoin’s history.

He added that the solo miner had a large hash rate of around 120PH (peta hashes) at the time, equivalent to around 0.12 EH (exa hashes), with an average of around 12PH over a week which is roughly 0.02% of the total network hash rate.

The reward for solving block 841,286 was recently reduced from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC in the Bitcoin halving at block 840,000 on April 20, meaning it was worth around $200,000 at BTC prices at the time.

Kolivas examined the block-solve summary, postulating that this large miner either recently switched from pooled mining post-halving “presumably for no longer recouping their electricity costs” for a chance at a solo block. Either that or they have been “intermittently hashing/renting large amounts solo,” he added.

The feat is remarkable because mining a valid block solo is an extremely rare event akin to winning the lottery. It is so rare that it has only occurred 282 times out of the 841,300 or so blocks that have been produced since Bitcoin’s inception 14 years ago.

Mining BTC requires participants to input computational power to solve and add the next block to the network.

However, with the asset’s price increasing, mining has exploded in popularity resulting in an increase in competitiveness — known as difficulty — and hash rate, or network horsepower, meaning that it is almost impossible to solve a block alone.

Related: PayPal proposes ‘cryptoeconomic’ rewards for sustainable Bitcoin miners

In March 2023, Cointelegraph reported that a solo miner netted the entire 6.25 BTC reward for solving a block, however, prices were much lower then so the reward was around $150,000.

The most recent solo block was on April 5, a couple of weeks before the halving, when a solo miner solved block 837,814 with 7PH of hash rate netting a reward of around $422,750 at the time.

The average network hash rate is currently 618 EH/s (exa hashes per second) having hit an all-time high of 728 EH/s on April 23, according to Bitinfocharts. It has increased by more than 90% over the past 12 months making the latest solo mining achievement even more exceptional.