Bitcoin’s massive mining network produced an unlikely winner this week: a lone miner running only a handful of machines managed to secure an entire block reward, a result so improbable that most hobbyists never see it happen in their lifetime.
Instead of relying on the shared payouts of a mining pool, the participant chose to route their machines through CKpool’s solo-mining service — a setup that only pays when miners independently solve a block. Late Thursday, that risk paid off. Their modest operation discovered block 927,474, instantly earning them 3.133 BTC, worth roughly $284,000.
Key Takeaways
A solo miner using only ~270 TH/s solved a Bitcoin block worth over $284K.
Their probability of success was roughly once every 82 years.
The miner controlled only 0.00002% of the total network hashpower.
Solo mining remains extremely risky but can yield massive payouts when luck strikes.
The miner’s total computing power hovered around 270 terahashes per second, the kind of output achievable with just a few air-cooled ASIC rigs. In a network pushing over a million terahashes per second, this places the miner’s share at nearly zero from a statistical standpoint.
CKpool developer Con Kolivas noted that someone with this level of hashpower would rarely expect such a result — the probability works out to roughly one successful block every eight decades.
Because Bitcoin’s rules award the entire block reward to whichever miner solves the cryptographic puzzle first, even the smallest players still have an outside chance at outperforming industrial-scale firms that control exahashes of equipment.
Why Anyone Still Mines Solo
The overwhelming majority of miners join pools to avoid long stretches with no income. Solo miners, however, willingly chase a “lottery-style” outcome: they may earn nothing for months or years, but if they hit a block, they collect 100% of the reward.
And recently, this rare outcome has happened more than once. Last month, another miner with only 6 TH/s — tiny compared to Thursday’s winner — unexpectedly found a block as well. That win was valued around $265,000 at the time.
Even in a Corporate Mining Era, the Door Isn’t Closed
Large public miners like Marathon and IREN operate fleets of hardware producing tens of exahashes, millions of times more power than Thursday’s solo winner. Yet Bitcoin’s consensus system preserves the possibility that a tiny setup in a garage can momentarily outshine the biggest players.
For many hobbyists, that slim possibility is exactly what keeps solo mining alive.
