A solo Bitcoin miner achieved a notable victory by mining block 860749 on Tuesday, securing a reward of $181,000. This achievement is remarkable given the competitive landscape dominated by large mining pools.
Typically, Bitcoin blocks are mined approximately every 10 minutes and are usually captured by mining pools that aggregate computing power to increase their chances of success. Following a recent halving event, the reward for mining a block is currently set at 3.125 bitcoin.
Solo miners generally have less computational power compared to mining pools, although new solo mining rigs like BitAxe, which offer up to 500 Giga Hashes per second (GH/s), are emerging. Winning a block solo is akin to hitting the jackpot due to the current network hashrate and difficulty levels being at all-time highs, coupled with the presence of institutional miners with vast resources.
Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, explained to CoinDesk, “While it’s not exceedingly rare for a solo miner to find a block, it is indeed a low-probability event. However, this occurrence has become somewhat more frequent due to the rise of small ASICs (mining equipment) designed for home mining.”
Despite the occasional successes of solo miners, the mining pool sector remains highly concentrated. According to Hashrate Index, two major pools, FoundryUSA and Antpool, together account for 53% of the total Bitcoin network hashrate. FoundryUSA has a reported hash rate of 202.8 exahashes per second (EH/s), while Antpool’s hash rate stands at 160.3 EH/s. For context, an exahash represents one billion gigahashes.
This solo mining victory highlights the ongoing evolution and competitive nature of the Bitcoin mining landscape, where both individual miners and large pools vie for block rewards in an increasingly challenging environment.
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