A lone-wolf Bitcoin miner hit the jackpot today by processing a block on the biggest cryptocurrency’s network.

The block contained 4,365 transactions and was processed at 12:43pm ET on Wednesday. The miner received 3.19 BTC for processing the block—today worth around $210,000.

First flagged on X (aka Twitter) on Wednesday by journalist Pete Rizzo, the miner processed block 853,742 of the Bitcoin blockchain. 

Bitcoin miners are needed to process blocks on the Bitcoin network. Blocks are full of transaction data and are part of the cryptocurrency’s impenetrable ledger—also known as a blockchain.

When blocks are processed, miners are rewarded with newly minted Bitcoins. 

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As the Bitcoin network has grown in size, it has become harder to mine the digital coins. 

Miners today are typically large operations run by companies that have warehouses full of specialized computers and technicians, using a lot of electricity to do so. Individual miners often join mining pools to increase their odds—but split any reward.

Still, very rarely, a single operator can still get lucky and process a block at home with a mining machine. While the odds of a solo miner completing a block are said to be greater than 5,000-to-1, that appears to be what happened today. 

Image created by Decrypt using AI

Solo Bitcoin Miner Hits the Jackpot with $218,000 Block Reward

A solo Bitcoin miner beat the odds on Monday, solving a block and taking home a whopping $218,544 reward. The miner of block 841286 became the 282nd solo miner in Bitcoin history across more than 841,000 blocks to achieve this feat. According to Con Kolivas, lead developer of mining software provider CKpool, the miner contributed an average of 12 petahashes—1,000,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion) hashes per second, or about 0.02% of the network’s total hash rate. In other words, his odds of beat...

NewsCoins
2 min read
Jose Antonio Lanz

Back in April, a solo miner also won big by solving a block and taking home a $218,544 reward.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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