Bitcoin solo miner banks $350K with 2.3 petahash in ‘incredible odds’

Another solo Bitcoin miner has just hit the jackpot, mining an entire Bitcoin block with a relatively low-powered rig and netting themselves just under $350,000 in Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin historian Pete Rizzo said the solo miner “beat incredible odds” on Thursday to mine an entire block. The administrator of the Bitcoin mining pool CKpool, where the block was mined, congratulated the lucky miner, adding that they used just 2.3 petahashes to solve it.

“A miner of this size has about a 1 in 2,800 chance of solving a block every day, or once every 8 years on average,” they said. (It’s an approximately 0.004% chance.)

According to Mempool Space, the miner solved block 903883 and received a subsidy of ‎3.173 BTC, or $349,028.

A solo block is mined. Source: Mempool Space

Solo mining rigs 

While the exact specifications of the miner’s rig are unknown, they may have been using several older-generation ASIC miners, which can produce 2.3 petahashes per second of hashpower.

Smaller hobbyist solo miners such as the Bitaxe Gamma, FutureBit Apollo BTC, or Canaan Avalon Nano 3, can only produce a few terahashes per second.  

Smaller still, USB miners such as the NerdMiner Pro v2 can only produce kilohashes per second and are very unlikely to hit the jackpot on a full block. 

To have a reasonable chance of mining one Bitcoin block per month, a solo miner would need around 166,000 TH/s of hash power. This is equivalent to almost 500 Antminer S21 Hydro units, which would cost millions of dollars in upfront investment, Cointelegraph reported earlier this year. 

Previous solo jackpots 

In February, a solo miner struck it big on block 883,181, which also yielded the 3.125 Bitcoin block reward, worth over $300,000 at the time. It was speculated that the lucky miner may have used a Bitaxe. 

Another solo miner struck digital gold in early June, successfully mining 899,826, earning a reward worth $330,000, which was even rarer amid record-high network difficulty.

With solo mining, hashrate doesn’t necessarily guarantee success, as it is pure probability. A solo miner with 2.3 PH/s has roughly one in 375,300 chance per block at current difficulty levels, according to SoloChance. 

Mining production falls 

Meanwhile, industrial Bitcoin mining output has declined in June for some major players, including Riot Platforms, Cipher Mining and MARA Holdings. 

Several firms strategically curtailed operations in June to avoid costly peak demand charges in Texas, where tariffs are applied during summer months.