A lone Bitcoin miner running just 6 terahashes per second (TH/s)—an almost imperceptible fraction of the network—managed to mine a full BTC block on Friday, collecting 3.146 BTC plus fees, worth nearly $265,000.
The rare feat was confirmed by Con Kolivas, creator of the Solo CK pool, who said the miner faced “only a one in 180 million chance” of solving a block on any given day.
The miner controls a minuscule 0.0000007% of Bitcoin’s total network hashpower, which recently reached a record 855.7 exahashes per second (EH/s).
This block is the 308th ever mined through CKpool since its 2014 launch and the first in roughly three months. CKpool allows miners to solo mine while using the pool’s infrastructure, so the winning wallet keeps the full block reward minus a 2% fee.
Friday’s win is one of the luckiest solo-mined blocks in recent memory. In 2022, a solo miner with 126 TH/s overcame odds of roughly 1 in 1.3 million to mine a block—but Friday’s miner faced a far larger disparity between hashpower and the network.
The winning wallet had been submitting shares as usual, but with only 6 TH/s—the kind of output produced by a single older-generation ASIC—finding a block is usually a matter of hundreds of years of continuous mining.
Solo mining has become increasingly rare as Bitcoin’s total hash rate climbs. While this improves network security, it dramatically lowers the chances that small miners can capture a block on their own, making Friday’s success an extraordinary stroke of luck.
