Solo Bitcoin Miner Wins $330K Block as Difficulty Hits Record 126.98T

A solo Bitcoin miner successfully mined block 899,826, earning a reward worth $330,386, a rare feat amid record-high network difficulty.

According to mempool.space data, the block was confirmed at 3:48 am UTC on June 5 and included 3,680 transactions. The miner, operating under the Solo CK pool, collected a subsidy of 3.125 Bitcoin (BTC) plus an additional 0.026 BTC in fees.

The average fee per transaction in block 899,826 was around $0.29, with a median fee rate of around 2 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), suggesting relatively light network congestion at the time.

In a June 5 post on X, Con Kolivas, a software engineer and administrator of the solo mining pool ckpool, said the miner who won the Bitcoin block recently ramped up their hashrate to 259 petahashes per second (PH/s), which is unusually large.

Based on the fact that only one worker (mining device identity) was connected, he said this was almost certainly a rented hashrate — likely from a cloud or marketplace service — temporarily pointed at the pool to try to win a block.

He said the account had been mining on CKPool, but normally it had a much lower hashrate. Therefore, the big hashrate was probably a short-term rental used to “take a shot” at scoring a block reward.

Related: MARA increases Bitcoin production by 35% amid new hashrate highs

Bitcoin mining difficulty hits record high

On June 1, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty hit a new all-time high of 126.98 trillion, according to data from Blockchain.com. The surge in difficulty reflects rising competition among miners and increasing network security.

The mining difficulty is adjusted every 2,016 blocks and is driven by the network hashrate, which measures the total computational power dedicated to securing the network. 

With current difficulty levels, the chances of an individual miner successfully solving a block are minuscule. As Bitcoin’s difficulty continues to increase, such solo wins will likely become even rarer, adding further intrigue when they occur.

Related: Bitcoin miners sued over cryptography patents in US court case

Solo mining wins on the rise?

The recent solo block win came amid an increase in similar mining successes this year.

On March 10, a solo Bitcoin miner using a small, low-cost mining rig earned 3.15 BTC (worth $263,000 at the time) for solving block 887,212 via the solo.ckpool pool, becoming the 297th solo miner to achieve this feat.

Likewise, on Feb. 10, a solo Bitcoin miner successfully mined block 883,181, earning a reward of 3.15 BTC (including fees), worth over $300,000 at the time. The block included 3,071 transactions, according to data from Mempool.space.

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