One Person, 100 PH/s, $200K: Solo Miner Beats the Bitcoin Lottery 🎰

A solo Bitcoin miner claimed a block reward worth roughly $200,000 after solving block 960,804 at 02:11 UTC on Monday, according to Dr -ck, the pseudonymous developer behind CKPool. The block paid 3.15689830 BTC, comprising the 3.125 BTC subsidy and 0.032 BTC in fees from 4,243 transactions. The winning address was identified as bc1qdyqjq9qccp34pyv3kxmsrkn7p0amnsqqy8kdeq, marking the 317th solo block found through CKPool.

Dr -ck described the miner's setup as "a wildly variable – presumably rental – hashrate peaking at 100 PH," against a network hashrate of 924 exahashes per second, per mempool.space. That peak represented roughly 0.011% of total network power, translating to expected odds of one block every 64 days or so. By comparison, a hobbyist running a single 100 TH/s machine faces odds closer to 1 in 62,750 on any given day, or an average wait of 172 years.

The find came amid ongoing attention to recent solo mining successes, including a separate block last week that paid 3.125 BTC plus fees for a $259,637 reward. Earlier solo blocks this year have brought $225,000, $210,000, $266,000, $365,000 and $350,000, with dollar values tracking Bitcoin's price rather than any change in probability. The block subsidy remains fixed at 3.125 BTC until the next halving at block 1,050,000, roughly 89,000 blocks away and expected in spring 2028, when it drops to 1.5625 BTC.

CKPool allows individual miners to point hardware at its infrastructure without operating a full Bitcoin node, taking a 2% fee from any block found. Dr -ck noted the discovery came "despite the chaos" from the recent Coldcard hardware wallet exploit, which has resulted in losses estimated at $114 million. Bitcoin changed hands at around $63,700 on Monday, up 1.1% on the day, according to Coin data cited in the source report.