Solo Bitcoin miner defies astronomical odds to claim block worth $270K

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? A solo Bitcoin mining enthusiast running a small-scale operation has hit the jackpot. On Friday, the machine – believed to be an older generation ASIC device capable of around six terahashes per second of performance – defied the odds and solved a Bitcoin block, taking home a small fortune in the process.

According to CoinDesk, the lowly miner had a one in 180 million chance of solving a Bitcoin block on any given day. At roughly 6 TH/s, the miner accounts for just 0.0000007 percent of the Bitcoin network's total hash power.

A single Bitcoin is trading for around $86,270 as of this writing. Given the reward of roughly 3.146 BTC and associated fees for mining a block, the haul is worth around $270,000 currently.

Bitcoin is a roller coaster of peaks and valleys, and is in a down spot right now. Less than a month ago, the volatile cryptocurrency was valued closer to $115,000, which would have put the total reward closer to $360,000.

Congratulations to extremely lucky miner 3K99~Ct8M with only SIX TH for solving the 308th solo block at https://t.co/UWgBvLkDqc. A miner of this size has only a a in 180 million chance of solving a block each day! https://t.co/Jx3fTUlaIe pic.twitter.com/F5CKVrEfYt

– Dr -ck (@ckpooldev) November 21, 2025

The miner that found the lucky block operates as part of a solo pool created by Con Kolivas. It is only the 308th block ever mined by the pool, which allows solo miners to keep their full reward minus a two percent fee.

As CoinDesk highlights, it is one of the "luckiest" solo mines in recent history. Back in 2022, a solo miner running a setup with 126 TH/s of power defied odds of one in 1.3 million to capture a block, but that is a drop in the bucket compared to the latest happening.

In essence, mining for Bitcoin is a lot like playing the lottery, and serious miners employ a lot of the same tactics. Rather than go at it solo, miners often join pools to group their resources together for a better shot of solving a block. If a pool is successful, they will split the winnings equally across members – ensuring that everyone gets a piece of the pie.

Image credit: Erling Loken Andersen

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Solo Bitcoin miner defies astronomical odds to claim block worth $270K

 

[Axeia]

It's like lootboxes with a bad percentage. It's unlikely you win but every once in a while there's some unlucky fool.

 

[opckieran]

With luck like that he should have just played the lottery instead. Only half those odds, sure, but for a 100-5000x better payout!

 

[Kashim]

This is the most pointless article I've seen in a while. Must be a slow Monday.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

OK so.....how much hardware did this "solo" miner have? Being solo doesnt mean he doesnt have a garage full of GPUs. How long has this been running, how much electricity has been wasted? After taking out taxes and payment for electricity and the hardware, I;d be surprised if this guy out earned a McDonalds employee.

 

[bclaymiles]

OK so.....how much hardware did this "solo" miner have? Being solo doesnt mean he doesnt have a garage full of GPUs. How long has this been running, how much electricity has been wasted? After taking out taxes and payment for electricity and the hardware, I;d be surprised if this guy out earned a McDonalds employee.

It's easy enough to figure out the math. It said right up front, six terahashes. That's about 140 watts continuous, or one old-school lightbulb on all the time. Annually, it's 1.2 megawatt-hours. Even in high electricity rate areas, that'd be something like $600 to run it for one year. Now, we don't know how long the miner had been running it. But even if it'd been for a solid decade, well...do the math. cost/return is still a 'winner' -- in his case.

 

[bviktor]

Looool it's Con Kolivas, the former kernel developer who had many clashes with the other kernel devs, and his hard work was basically thrown away only to be replaced with Ingo Molnar's "work" which was basically a rewrite of his. Shameful.

I had no idea he then went on to make CGMiner. I even used it at some point lol. That would sustain a pretty nice income from miner dev fees alone.

And he's also casually an anaesthetist lol.

Very happy to see he made good money recently. Well deserved, dude, GG.

 

[JSabin]

Down with Bitxoin. It's a sham.