Against All Odds: Solo Bitcoin Miner Strikes Gold with 3.125 BTC Block Reward
Talk about a David vs. Goliath moment—an independent miner just outmuscled the big pools to snag a full Bitcoin block. The 3.125 BTC payout (worth roughly $150,000 at current prices) proves the little guy can still win—assuming they’ve got cheap electricity and a masochistic streak.
How’d they pull it off? Probably a mix of vintage hardware, black-magic cooling setups, and sheer stubbornness. Meanwhile, Wall Street’s ‘institutional miners’ are burning $50M on rigs that’ll be obsolete before their CFOs figure out how to expense them.
This is Bitcoin’s beauty play: no VC funding required, just proof-of-work poetry. Though let’s be real—the miner’s probably selling to cover this month’s power bill.
Solo Bitcoin miners record success
The victories recorded by solo miners are a reminder that even though improbable and nearly impossible, they can still be successful in the industry. There have been several cases this year where some of them have come out on top when it comes to mining, taking the full reward. For instance, the first successfully mined solo block this year happened in February, with the miner solving block number 883,181 and winning 3.125 BTC worth $300,000.
According to bitcoin block explorer Mempool.space, the block contained 3,071 transactions and a total reward of 3.15 BTC. In a post announcing the development, Bitcoin miner Marshall Long speculated that the miner might have used a Bitaxe, a mining device that can be used for solo mining or mining pools where miners combine computational power to increase their chances of solving a block.
In March, another solo Bitcoin miner solved block number 887,212, winning about 3.15 BTC, which was worth around $263,000 at the time. What made this incident spectacular is that the miner used a 480 GH/s Bitaxe device to solve the block. This month, there have been two solo miners who have gone all the way. The first, which happened on July 4, saw the miner earn 3.173 BTC worth $330,000 after mining block number 899,826. The second, which happened on July 12, saw the miner win 3.154 BTC after solving number 904,989.
Rise in network difficulty poses challenges to professional mining firms
Over the last few months, there has been a rise in network difficulty and hashrate, coupled with a drop in block subsidy. These developments have posed challenges to established mining firms. Most of them have now diversified their large mining operations into AI data centers and high-performance computing to make up for the losses racked up in the mining business amid a rise in competition.
Bitcoin network difficulty is currently about 126 trillion, which is close to its all-time high levels. Its network difficulty has also been trending up over the last few days, forcing miners to use greater computing and power resources to mine blocks. Presently, miners earn a 3.125 BTC reward worth around $373,000 from a single block at current prices. The competition in the industry puts them on edge, pushing them to find the cheapest energy resources.
In June, several Bitcoin miners located in Texas were forced to reduce their energy consumption to avoid paying peak demand charges to the grid operator. This caused a drop in block production in the short term. Last month, MARA was one of the firms affected by the weather conditions, reporting lower power output numbers due to its slowed mining operations.
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