Bitcoin Miner Nets $200K For Verifying Bitcoin Block

A single Bitcoin miner accomplished an incredible achievement by defeating the odds and solving a Bitcoin block, taking home the whole 3.125 Bitcoin block reward, which is almost $200,000.

Software developer and owner of the solo mining pool “ckpool,” Con Kolivas, revealed the ground-breaking accomplishment on April 28. Kolivas said that the miner, functioning inside the “ckpool,” successfully resolved the 282nd single block in the history of Bitcoin. At the time, the miner possessed an impressive hash rate of about 120 petahashes per second (PH/s), or about 0.12 exahashes per second (EH/s). Remarkably, the average hash rate of the miner during a seven-day period was 12 PH/s, which is a negligible portion of the total hash rate of the network.

Reward Reaped Amid Bitcoin Halving

The monumental reward materialized shortly after the much-anticipated Bitcoin halving event at block 840,000, which slashed the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. This pivotal alteration in the Bitcoin blockchain spurred the lucrative reward for the intrepid solo miner.

Delving into the intricacies of the miner’s strategy, Kolivas deduced a significant shift from pooled mining to solo mining post-halving. This strategic move, driven by the diminishing profitability of pooled mining, underscored the miner’s astute anticipation of solo mining’s potential windfall.

In the Bitcoin ecosystem, solo mining success is as uncommon as winning the lottery. Just 282 of the 841,300 blocks that have been created by Bitcoin in its 14 years have been mined alone. Prior to the April 5 halving, the most recent solo-mined block was block 837,814, which was solved by a single miner with a hash rate of 7 PH/s and yielding a reward of almost $422,750.

The successful attempt of a lone miner demonstrates the volatility and attraction of mining Bitcoin and the possibility of tremendous profits in the midst of the blockchain’s dynamic environment.