An independent Bitcoin miner has made an impressive feat in the world of cryptocurrency, successfully unlocking a Bitcoin block using a small and inexpensive mining rig. This extraordinary feat rewarded the miner with a whopping amount of around $263,000.
The miner rose to become the 297th individual to mine a Bitcoin block all by himself, relaying on the solo.ckpool Bitcoin mining pool, according to the pool’s developer, Con Kolivas. The mining rig utilized by this miner, the 480-gigahash per second (GH/s) Bitaxe machine, is modest when compared to the behemoth devices used by major crypto mining corporations that operate at over 230,000 GH/s.
According to Kolivas, such a small rig typically stands less than a 1 in a million chance of discovering a block in a day. On average, it would require 3,500 years to identify a block. However, the miner defied the odds and collected a total of 3.15 BTC after solving block 887,212, which was credited on March 10 at 7:22 pm UTC.
Bitcoin miners in the market, like a 1,200 gigahash Bitaxe Gamma 601 machine, are almost thrice as effective as the one used by this solo miner and are priced approximately at $158. Meanwhile, a Bitaxe Gamma 601 has a one in 4.6 million chance of mining a solo block on any given day in a year, which highlights the extraordinary achievement of the said lone miner.
The majority of Bitcoin mining is conducted by larger entities like Foundry USA and MARA Pool. Pocket-sized Bitcoin miners are not often profitable, but they’re being developed in an open-source method as a challenge to the exclusive nature of the Bitcoin mining industry. Despite the odds, the success achieved by the solo miner shines a light on the potential for open source projects to make Bitcoin mining more transparent and accessible.