Ding ding ding—now we have a winner!
A solo miner bagged a reward of three.173 BTC ($349,028) by mining Bitcoin block quantity 903,883 late Thursday evening. Winners like this don’t come round typically; in reality, one skilled says an underdog this small will solely win each eight years on common.
Thursday evening’s fortunate winner was recognized as utilizing Solo CK, a non-profit service that permits Bitcoin miners to try to mine solo blocks. Through the use of Solo CK, the miner paid a 2% payment however prevented the overhead required to run a high-end Bitcoin mining rig.
“Congratulations to miner bc1q~9sj3 with 2.3PH for fixing block quantity 301,” the pseudonymous Dr. CK, software program engineer and admin for Solo CK, wrote on X. “A miner of this dimension has a few 1 in 2,800 likelihood of fixing a block on daily basis, or as soon as each 8 years on common.”
To place this into perspective, 2.3PH, brief for petahashes, works out as a slither of Bitcoin’s complete estimated hash fee of 881.11 EH/s, brief for exahash. That’s simply 0.00026% of the hash fee to be precise. When in comparison with Foundry USA’s hash fee, the mining pool that processed the block prior, the solo miner nonetheless pales compared with simply 0.000847% of Foundry’s 271.7 EH/s hash fee.
Bitcoin miners spend computational energy to unravel complicated mathematical equations to seek out what known as a “nonce,” which is brief for “quantity used as soon as.” That quantity makes the block meet Bitcoin’s problem requirement, which is continually adjusting, and permits the block to be added to the blockchain.
The miner is then rewarded with newly minted Bitcoin and the transaction charges included in that block. Bitcoin mining is the underpinning of the proof-of-work consensus mechanism.
However it’s not just like the outdated days—again when hobbyists may mine Bitcoin of their garages all of the livelong day. Bitcoin mining is now industrialized and firms make use of warehouses stuffed with ASIC machines to compete for mining rewards.
Mining solo and competing in opposition to large corporations for a block is fairly onerous, and the chances of really profitable the reward are extraordinarily low. Most solo miners who go this route be part of mining swimming pools that mix contributors’ energy and break up rewards amongst them. Scott Norris, CEO of unbiased Bitcoin miner Optiminer, instructed Decrypt that solo mining is “like enjoying the lottery,” regardless of some fortunate winners.
For comparability, Foundry USA, an American-based mining pool, has been rewarded with 304,576 BTC ($32.8 billion) all through its historical past. Since 2014, Solo CK customers have mined 5,222 BTC, which is $594.9 million at at this time’s value—most of which have been seemingly one-time winners, fairly than the identical solo miner profitable a number of instances.
The earlier miner utilizing Solo CK to efficiently mine a block was 4 weeks in the past, bagging a 3.15 BTC reward, or roughly $330,300. Earlier than that, we’d have to return three months for any Solo CK wins.
Solo mining is just set to get harder, as Bitcoin’s hash fee has been steadily rising ever because it first launched. Over the previous 12 months, for instance, the hash fee has elevated 46% from 599.41 EH/s to 881 EH/s.
