- On September 7th, a solitary Bitcoin miner experienced a significant windfall, successfully uncovering block #913,593 and claiming a reward of 3.13 BTC, an equivalent of US$347,980.
- Operating at a hash rate of 200 TH/s on the CKPool platform, the miner faced odds of approximately 1 in 36,000 for daily success, translating to an estimated once-in-a-century occurrence, according to the pool’s administrator.
- Notably, this marks the second instance of a solo-mined block on CKPool this month, coinciding with a recent surge of 4.89% in Bitcoin mining difficulty, reaching a new historical peak.
A lone cryptocurrency enthusiast hit the jackpot on September 7th, independently mining Bitcoin block number 913,593. This accomplishment yielded a reward of 3.13 Bitcoins, currently valued at approximately $347,980 in US currency, or about $516,720 in Australian dollars.
This particular block encompassed 593 separate transactions, resulting in supplementary transaction fees amounting to 0.004 BTC, which translates to roughly $471 USD (or $699 AUD). The successful miner employed a processing power of 200 TH/s, utilizing the CKPool mining platform. According to Con Kolivas, the administrator of the mining pool, such a setup offers a slim chance of success, estimated at just one in 36,000 each day, representing an event likely to occur only once every hundred years.
This represents the second instance this month in which a block has been mined independently; the first was confirmed on September 1st via the same CKPool network. In August, another individual miner successfully solved block #910,440, netting 3.137 BTC, a sum then worth around $365,000 USD (or $541,600 AUD), as previously reported by Crypto News Australia.
The CKPool service empowers individuals to participate in Bitcoin mining without the need to operate a complete Bitcoin node. This offers smaller operators the opportunity to compete alongside large-scale, industrial mining operations. However, due to the fierce competition from dedicated mining farms utilizing hundreds of specialized ASIC machines, the prospect of individual miners succeeding remains statistically unlikely.
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Climbs Sharply
Interestingly, this solo mining success occurred simultaneously with a significant surge in Bitcoin mining difficulty. On September 5th, the difficulty level increased by 4.89%, reaching a record high of 136.04T. This marks the fifth consecutive upward adjustment, according to data provided by Ycharts. Although the time intervals between mined blocks remain shorter than the target of 10 minutes, it is anticipated that these intervals will eventually increase.
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Information sourced from Glassnode indicates that the 7-day moving average of the hash rate exceeded 1 exahash per second (EH/s) towards the end of August, before subsequently adjusting to 973 EH/s at the time of this writing.
Currently, Bitcoin is being traded at around US$112.2K (or AU$170K), representing a modest increase of 1.1% over the preceding 24-hour period, as reported by CoinGecko. In general, recent days have been relatively uneventful for Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market. Price movement seems to have stalled, potentially influenced by ETF outflows that surpassed US$380 million during the same timeframe.