Solo Bitcoin Miner Wins Big After Securing an Entire Block Reward

Bitcoin blocks are generated approximately every half hour and are usually mined by mining collectives, who consolidate their computational power to boost their odds of receiving the block incentive. The incentive for successfully mining a block stands at 3.125 bitcoins currently, following a halving event that occurred earlier in the year.

Solo miners usually have historically had limited computing power to mine blocks, although new solo mining rigs like BitAxe claim to offer 500 Giga Hashes per second (GH/s). Still, a solo miner winning a block could be compared to winning a lottery, given that the network’s hashrate and difficulty are currently at all-time highs and institutional miners with immense computing power are also competing for the same block rewards.

It’s not uncommon for a solo miner to discover a block; it’s simply an event with low odds. However, we’ve seen this happening more often lately due to the increase in the production of small ASICs (mining equipment), which are designed for individual miners who want to mine from their own homes. – Julio Moreno, Head of Research at CryptoQuant, speaking to CoinDesk.

“Still, the mining pool space remains highly concentrated, with two pools, FoundryUSA and Antpool, adding up to 53% of the total Bitcoin network hashrate,” Moreno added.

As per Hashrate Index, Foundry USA is currently reported to have a hash rate of approximately 202.8 billion gigahashes per second (or 202.8 quadrillion hashes per second), while AntPool stands at around 160.3 billion gigahashes per second (or 160.3 quadrillion hashes per second). A single exahash is equivalent to one billion gigahashes.