TLDR
- A solo Bitcoin miner with 120 PH/s hash rate won a full block reward of $218,544 in April 2024
- Another solo miner with only 500 Gh/s hash rate (using a small Bitaxe device) mined a block worth about $206,000 in July 2024
- Solo mining is rare and compared to winning a lottery due to the low odds of success
- Bitcoin’s fourth halving event occurred on April 20, 2024, reducing block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC
- Most Bitcoin mining is done by large operations or mining pools, making solo mining successes noteworthy
In the world of Bitcoin mining, where large operations and mining pools dominate, solo miners occasionally beat the odds to claim full block rewards.
Recent months have seen two notable instances of individual miners striking it lucky, demonstrating that small-scale mining can still yield significant rewards in the cryptocurrency space.
In April 2024, a solo Bitcoin miner with a hash rate of around 120 petahashes per second (PH/s) successfully mined block 841,286. This feat earned the miner a total of 3.433 BTC, equivalent to $218,544 at the time. The reward consisted of a 3.125 BTC block subsidy ($198,937) and 0.308 BTC ($19,607) in transaction fees.
Con Kolivas, a developer at CKpool, the platform used by the miner, shared the news on social media. He noted that the miner’s odds of solving the block were about 0.02%, or more than 1 in 5,000. This calculation was based on the miner’s hash rate compared to the total Bitcoin network hash rate of around 638 exahashes per second (EH/s).
More recently, in July 2024, an even more unlikely event occurred. A tiny Bitcoin mining device with a hash rate of only 500 gigahashes per second (Gh/s) managed to mine a block.
HISTORY: A $200 at-home #Bitcoin miner just mined a block worth OVER $200,000
They beat once in a lifetime odds 🔥 pic.twitter.com/qE83q2d1cw
— The Bitcoin Historian (@pete_rizzo_) July 24, 2024
This device, known as a “Bitaxe” and produced by D-Central Technologies, is roughly the size of a human hand. The block mined by this small device was worth approximately $206,000 based on the Bitcoin price at the time.
The odds of this smaller device mining a block were even more remarkable. With the total Bitcoin network hash rate at 552.49 EH/s, equivalent to 552,490,000,000 Gh/s, the Bitaxe had roughly a 1 in 1.1 billion chance of mining a block every 10 minutes.
These success stories highlight the lottery-like nature of solo Bitcoin mining. Miners consume electricity whether they successfully mine a block or not, making solo mining a risky endeavor. However, for these lucky miners, the gamble paid off handsomely.
It’s worth noting that these events occurred in the context of Bitcoin’s fourth halving, which took place on April 20, 2024. This event reduced the block subsidy rewards for miners from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, making the success of solo miners even more significant in the face of reduced rewards.
Some Bitcoin enthusiasts worry that the trend towards large-scale mining and mining pools could lead to centralization of the Bitcoin network. They champion solo mining as a potential alternative to maintain the decentralized nature of the cryptocurrency.
