Solo Bitcoin Miner Hits the Jackpot, Scoring $266K Reward

A solo Bitcoin miner hit the jackpot early Friday, mining a block with no pool of supporting miners and bagging a $266,000 reward within the course of. However simply how practical is such a feat?

On Friday, an unknown miner processed Bitcoin block 888,737. The block contained 2,327 transactions and the miner obtained a payout of three.125 BTC, in addition to 0.032 BTC in charges. 

At right now’s Bitcoin value of $84,257 per coin, that is a greater than $266,000 payday.

Bitcoin miners work to course of blocks on the cryptocurrency’s community. Blocks are stuffed with transaction knowledge and are a part of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Miners are given newly minted cash: a 3.125 BTC mounted reward, together with the transaction charges paid by these utilizing the fee system throughout that individual block window. 

Because the community has grown, mining operations have develop into extra energy-intensive, and are sometimes now industrial-sized setups consisting of warehouses stuffed with machines. 

However sometimes, a solo miner can rating huge utilizing a house passion machine. On this case, in line with blockchain knowledge, the miner was utilizing a DIY FutureBit Apollo machine. 

Nevertheless, specialists informed Decrypt that issues may not be so simple as they sound: “solo mining,” per blockchain jargon, technically refers to any miner that is not in a mining pool. Swimming pools are teams of crypto miners that share their assets in order that they’ve a greater likelihood of processing a transaction. However in addition they then share the reward.

“The time period ‘solo miner’ is a extremely broad time period,” pseudonymous Bitcoin miner Econoalchemist informed Decrypt. “It might simply be one dude in his residence, or a warehouse stuffed with high-powered miners.”

In the end, which means that a “solo miner” might have a room stuffed with passion miners all switched on and dealing to safe a transaction. Such an operation would not essentially be as straightforward—or low-cost—to arrange, although it might give the miner a greater shot at securing a block win.

Nonetheless, with solo miners securing quite a few block wins in latest months, Friday’s information could spur extra Bitcoiners to attempt to have a go at house mining.

Edited by Andrew Hayward