Solo Bitcoin miner earns $271,000 using cheap rented hashpower

A solo miner on NiceHash mined Bitcoin block #928,351 for less than $100 in rental hashpower. The miner earned a reward of 3.152 BTC, equivalent to approximately $271,000.

Mempool statistics confirmed on Thursday that the block had a near-perfect health score of 99.96% and total transaction fees of 0.027 BTC (~$2,363). On-chain data reveal that the block had a median cost of about 2 sat/vB and a fee range of 1–313 sat/vB.

Solo Bitcoin miners beat odds to win blocks

The Mempool data revealed that the actual Bitcoin block had 2,806 transactions (-16.56%). The block had a total fee of 0.027 BTC (-6.18%). According to on-chain data, the block weighted 3.5 MWU (-12.37%).

The block was mined with Version 0x20400000, bits 0x1701e63a, nonce 0xcc01ab16, and a Merkle root of 45c4235f79f7c8642b4eca86ce7e7c28452374b4fc8f1b64b907e4912c3b626 at a network difficulty of 148,195,306,640,204.7.

On December 12, a different solo Bitcoin miner using the alias 1Ng9~VoQz successfully mined a legitimate block #927,474. The miner claimed the 3.13 BTC block reward, which is worth roughly $288,383.50. The Bitcoin block had 1,117 transactions (-62.99%), a block weight of 1.45 MWU (-63.65%), and total fees of 0.008 BTC (-8.83%).

Against mathematical odds, the Bitcoin miner utilized a hashrate (computing power) of 270 TH/s, equivalent to approximately 0.00002% of the total processing power of the Bitcoin network. As per the current Bitcoin mining data, a setup of this scale has a 1 in 30,000 chance of solving a block on any given day.

Ckpooldev, the developer of the CKPool software, the miner used to mine the block, commented that the incident represents the 310th instance of a solo miner obtaining a block reward under these particular tracking conditions.

Similar to previous miners that mined a single block, 1Ng9~VoQz did not distribute the mining rewards among other participants as they would have in a traditional mining pool model. Instead, the miner earned the entire amount (minus a 2% charge to CKPool) immediately.

In November, a platform user computed a block #924,569 using hardware with a hash rate of just 6 TH/s. CKPool administrator Con Kolivas referred to the miner as “incredibly lucky.” The odds of producing a block with such processing power are about 1 in 1.2 million every day.

Another solo Bitcoin miner mined block #920,440 in October using the Public Pool platform. The miner earned a reward of 3.141 BTC.

Bitcoin mining profitability declines despite rising hash rate

According to research released by JPMorgan (JPM), the profitability of Bitcoin (BTC) mining declined for the fourth consecutive month in November. Analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce noted that the daily block reward gross profit also decreased by 26% from the prior month.

According to Glassnode, the global Bitcoin hash rate (30-day moving average) is roughly 1.1 ZH/s. The present trend shows a surge toward mid-October record values of 1.15 ZH/s.

Global Bitcoin hash rate nears record levels set in mid-October. Source: Glassnode

On November 21, the hash price reached its lowest point of the year, at approximately $34 per PH/s per day, coinciding with Bitcoin’s decline to $83,000. The mining profitability indicator was limited to $40 per PH/s every day, even after the price of digital gold recovered to above $90,000.

In November, Fred Thiel, CEO of MARA, stated that miners are facing a challenging time due to growing competition and declining profitability in the mining industry.

The combined market capitalization of the 14 U.S.-led miners that JPM follows dropped 16% month over month to $59 billion.

JPM revealed that Cypher Mining (CIFR) beat the group thanks to its recent Fluidstack acquisition, with a 9% rise. Additionally, the JPM report noted that Bitdeer (BTDR) saw a 40% drop in performance.