A single Bitcoin miner from the Solo CK mining pool has defied the odds after successfully adding a new block to the Bitcoin blockchain, taking home 6.25 BTC (USD 266,000) for their efforts.
The lucky miner, who may have been mining on just one or two machines, solved a block with his modest 126 TH / s hashrate capacity. According to a tweet on Jan 11th from Solo administrator Dr. Con Kolivas this equates to around 0.000072% of the total Bitcoin (BTC) network hashrate which is 175,000,000 TH / s (175 EH / s).
Bitcoin mining expert and member of the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), Hass McCook, told Cointelegraph that he has never heard of such a thing, adding that “to say that this is very rare is an understatement.”
“Usually, having 0.000072% of the hashrate means that, on average, Only CK will win 0.000072% of the blocks, or approximately 1 in 1,400,000, “he explained.
“Everything in Bitcoin is probabilistic, even the settlement of transactions. The more confirmations you have in your tx, the less likely it is to be reversed. “
According to McCook, the miner could have been using only one machine. “The Antminer S19 is a 110TH / s machine, so Solo CK could have been mining with a single overclocked rig. Most likely it was 5 or 6 Antminer S9 units. In any case, it could easily be a home miner, “he said.
The hashrate of a machine refers to the number of hashes, or mathematical equations, that it can solve per second. On average, a new block of BTC is mined every ten minutes. Dr. Con Kolivas estimated that the odds weren’t that high, with a 1 in 10,000 chance of finding a block a day with that hash, but added that the miner probably wouldn’t repeat the feat.
“For the miner involved it is a once in a lifetime opportunity”, Kolivas wrote.
“Usually it is the largest miners who solve the blocks statistically, but there is no reason why even the smallest miner cannot solve one.”
Noted that a small miner in his pool had solved a block about a year ago.
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