Following the April 20 halving event, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached a new level, adding more than 2 trillion to hit 88.1 trillion.
One Bitcoin BTC $93 675 24h volatility: 1.6% Market cap: $1.86 T Vol. 24h: $30.61 B miner has got the entire crypto industry buzzing after he single-handedly processed a block. This is a rare victory in the Bitcoin mining industry, which is usually highly competitive and extensively dominated by large mining pools like Bit Digital, Riot Blockchain, and Marathon Digital.
Solo CK Bitcoin Miner Defies High Hashrate
According to Bitcoin block explorer Mempool.space, Solo CK, a mining pool that combines the hashrate of multiple smaller miners, mined Block 860749 on September 10. The block contained 5,935 transactions with a reward of 3.169 Bitcoin worth around $182,505.
While the feat was achieved under the mining pool, the reward would go to only the miner who solved the block. This is what big mining firms compete for in pursuit of profit. In this case, by the time the block was completely processed, the miner had used 629 petahashes worth of hashrate. This corresponds with 0.098% of the total power securing the blockchain.
The Bitcoin transaction tracker YCharts data showed that the transaction clocked in at 644.91 exahashes per second (EH/s). This comes less than two weeks after Bitcoin hashrate hit a new all-time-high (ATH) of 742 EH/s. Compared to a year ago, when the hashrate was at 395.70 EH/s, this new ATH is a 62% boost.
At such a high hashrate, miners are required to invest more in computing power and energy costs. In addition, a higher hashrate increases verification and transaction times, making it challenging for solo miners to validate a block successfully. This makes the recent solo miner’s feat more commendable. Out of the 859,000 blocks produced since Bitcoin went live in 2009, a solo miner has solved a block only 290 times.
The Footprint of Solo CK’s Individual Miners
As a pool, Solo CK has accomplished other blocks in the last year, which gave it 59.3 Bitcoin as a reward, currently worth $3.4 million. On August 30, a miner from this pool also received around $200,000 for processing a block. At another time, a Solo CK miner solved block 853,742 and received $210,000 for the effort.
Following the April 20 halving event, Bitcoin mining difficulty reached a new level, adding more than 2 trillion to hit 88.1 trillion. This made it difficult for many miners to earn the entire block reward alone. Defying all odds, Bitcoin block 841286, with a total reward of 3.43 BTC, was entirely mined by an individual miner from Solo CK. The miner had a total hash rate of about 4.4 EH/s and earned 5,460 coins.
Noteworthy, mining difficulty is a metric that measures how hard it is to mine a new block. An increase in the number of miners usually equates to an increase in Bitcoin mining difficulty. This is because there is more competition to find new blocks. On the other hand, if the number of miners is reduced, difficulty also follows suit, meaning that miners can then discover new blocks more easily.
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