Solo miner bags entire block reward with just 1PH of power

In an era when bitcoin mining giants are amassing warehouses full of specialized mining rigs, solo miners have fewer and fewer wins

article-image

mimagephotography/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

An astoundingly lucky solo miner solved block number 803,821 late Friday night and won the entire 6.25 bitcoin block reward, worth approximately $162,000.

Con Kolivas, the admin of Solo CKPool, announced the unlikely news on X, formerly Twitter, saying that this particular miner had only 1 petahash of computing power, yet still came out on top. 

“A miner of this size would only solve a block solo on average once every 7 years at current [difficulty],” Kolivas wrote. 

The miner kept nearly all the bitcoin (BTC) he won, aside from a 2% fee that went to Solo CKPool for its upkeep. 

Loading Tweet..

As Kolivas alluded to in his post, bitcoin difficulty — which indicates how challenging it is to find a valid hash that’s below the target — has skyrocketed from January 2023. Now, it’s at an all-time high of 52.39 trillion. This means that the target hash value a miner must produce is exceedingly low, and given the immense difficulty, a miner might have to compute an incredibly large number of hashes before producing one that’s valid for a block.

Having more mining machines and powerful hardware makes the odds of solving a block that much easier, which makes what this solo miner did even more notable. 

Bitcoin difficulty is also adjusted roughly every two weeks or every 2,016 blocks, and the difficulty is projected to increase on Tuesday by nearly 7% to 56.03 trillion. 

Blockworks previously reported on an even more improbable solo bitcoin miner win in June. That person solved block 793,607 with what was likely a single Antminer S9 rig. 

Solo CKPool said at the time that a miner of that size would only solve a block “once every 450 years on average.”


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

The convergence of DePIN and energy generation aims to address modern grid challenges by incentivizing distributed generation.

article-image

The deal is made up of $700 million in cash and 11 million shares of Coinbase’s Class A common stock

article-image

Blockworks Research uses numbers to help crypto advance to a higher stage of storytelling

article-image

While Arizona’s governor could veto another crypto reserve bill, similar North Carolina and Texas laws are approaching the finish line

article-image

However, they noted there’s now an increased risk that unemployment and inflation will rise in the coming months. 

article-image

The network’s most ambitious upgrade since the Merge brings validator streamlining, smart account UX and doubled blobspace to Ethereum