Solo Miner Wins $181,000 Bitcoin Block Reward

According to CoinDesk, a solo bitcoin miner successfully mined block 860749 on Tuesday, earning a reward of $181,000. This event is notable as bitcoin mining is typically dominated by larger mining pools, such as FoundryUSA and Antpool, which together represent more than 50% of the total hash rate. Bitcoin blocks are produced approximately every 30 minutes, and the reward for successfully mining a block currently stands at 3.125 bitcoin, following a recent halving event earlier this year. Solo miners generally have limited computing power compared to large mining pools, although new solo mining rigs like BitAxe claim to offer 500 Giga Hashes per second (GH/s). Despite this, a solo miner winning a block is akin to winning a lottery, given the network's all-time high hashrate and difficulty, along with competition from institutional miners with immense computing power. Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, explained that while it is not rare for a solo miner to find a block, it remains a low probability event. He noted that the production of small ASICs (mining equipment) has increased, allowing more individuals to mine from home. Despite the occasional success of solo miners, the mining pool space remains highly concentrated. FoundryUSA and Antpool alone account for 53% of the total Bitcoin network hashrate. According to Hashrate Index, FoundryUSA has a reported hash rate of 202.8 exahashes per second (EH/s), while Antpool has a hash rate of 160.3 EH/s. An exahash is a metric that is one billion times greater than a gigahash.