Solo Bitcoin miner beats odds and wins $130,000 in BTC by solving block

As the cryptocurrency industry continues to grow, mining has become a popular way to earn cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), with one solo miner striking it lucky using a Bitcoin mining rig of just 10 TH/s, possibly consisting of just four USB sticks.

Specifically, the person using this mining rig has beaten the odds and became the first to add block 772,793 to the Bitcoin blockchain, rewarding them directly with 6.25 BTC (worth over $130,000 at the time), user Willi9974 wrote on BitcoinTalk shortly after the block was solved on January 20.

Notably, 98% of the total 6.35939231 BTC authorized block reward and fees went to the miner, whereas the leftover 2% was directed to Solo CK pool, an online mining platform facilitating solo mining.

Beating the odds

Although the chances of adding a block as a solo miner depend on the number of hashes a rig is computing per second in relation to the total number of hashes of all the machines on the network, this lucky miner struck it big with just 10 terahashes per second (TH/s).

This accumulated power is the result of the four combined tiny miners, possibly USB sticks, each costing around $200 and featuring a hash rate of about 3 TH/s. In other words, the odds of this person succeeding in the endeavor were one in 26.9 million.

Various Bitcoin mining methods

It is also worth mentioning that various alternatives to mining Bitcoin using graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs) have been developed, including hard drive mining, 5G mining, ASIC mining, and Equihash mining, as Finbold reported. 

At the same time, the prevalence of Bitcoin mining and the rising concern over the negative effect of the Proof-of-Work (PoW) validation algorithm on the environment has given rise to mining operations using greener resources.

For instance, the construction of America’s first nuclear-powered Bitcoin mining data center has recently been completed in northeast Pennsylvania, whereas the Virunga National Park in eastern Congo is mining Bitcoin using hydroelectricity.