Rarer Than Winning the Lottery: A Bitcoin Solo Miner Earns 3.13 BTC in Just One Block

Last Sunday, an independent Bitcoin miner was lucky enough to successfully mine block 913,632 through the Solo CKPool service, earning a total reward of 3.13 BTC, equivalent to 347,872 USD at the current price. This block includes 593 transactions with a total value of 473.61 BTC, approximately 52.6 million USD, with an average transaction of 0.7987 BTC, according to information from blockchain explorers. The miner's reward consists of 3.125 BTC base and an additional 0.0042 BTC from transaction fees. Solo CKPool is a service that allows individual miners to participate in Bitcoin mining without the need to operate a full node, opening up opportunities for small miners to compete with the “big players” in the industry who own hundreds of powerful ASICs. However, achieving success as an individual is still extremely rare, as they face opponents with superior computing power. Peter Chung, Head of Research at Presto Labs, commented to Decrypt: “Among all current blockchain networks, nothing can match the decentralization of the Bitcoin network. Events like this only further prove that.” This is the second time this month that a solo miner has successfully mined a block, following a similar event on September 1. Last month, another solo miner also lucked out by mining block 910,440, receiving 3,137 BTC, worth about 365,000 USD. Currently, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin is at 136.04 T ( trillion, near an all-time high, according to data from YCharts. This metric is adjusted every 2,016 blocks to maintain an average mining time of about 10 minutes per block, making individual miners' wins as rare as winning the lottery, according to Arjun Vijay, founder of the Giottus exchange. Vijay explained further: “The most beautiful thing about Bitcoin's Proof of Work algorithm is that there is no formula to calculate in advance; the correct nonce can only be found through a trial and error process.” However, he also emphasized the advantages leaning towards large miners and pools: “They can break down the work, reduce duplication, so they still have a clear advantage. For most miners, participating in a pool to receive regular rewards is still a more reasonable choice than taking risks with rare results.” Vijay concluded that to make Bitcoin more decentralized, the number of pools needs to be increased rather than just relying on the number of solo miners. Currently, the price of Bitcoin is trading around 111,103 USD, up 0.5% in the past 24 hours and up 104.3% compared to the same period last year, according to CoinGecko.