Summary
- A solo miner successfully mined Bitcoin block 960,804, earning a reward of nearly $200,000.
- The total payout consisted of 3.16 BTC, which included the 3.125 BTC subsidy and 0.03 BTC in fees from 4,243 transactions.
- This marks the 317th solo block mined via CKPool.
In the early hours of Monday, a lone Bitcoin miner achieved a significant milestone by solving block 960,804 at 02:11 UTC, resulting in a reward valued at approximately $200,000.
The miner received a total of 3.15689830 BTC, which is comprised of the standard 3.125 BTC subsidy and an additional 0.032 BTC in transaction fees from the block's 4,243 transactions. This was noted by the pseudonymous developer Dr -ck, who identified the winning address as bc1qdyqjq9qccp34pyv3kxmsrkn7p0amnsqqy8kdeq.
Congratulations to the miner bc1qdyqjq9qccp34pyv3kxmsrkn7p0amnsqqy8kdeq, who achieved this feat with a highly variable - likely rented - hashrate that peaked at 100PH for solving the 317th solo block at this link! Despite recent turmoil from a hardware wallet exploit, Bitcoin continues to thrive…
— Dr -ck (@ckpooldev) August 3, 2026
Understanding the Odds
Bitcoin mining pits various machines against each other to solve a cryptographic challenge, with the winner receiving the block reward, currently set at 3.125 BTC, a figure that halves approximately every four years.
This particular case was less of a gamble than most. Dr -ck indicated that the winner operated with "a wildly variable - presumably rental - hashrate peaking at 100PH." The overall network hashrate was recorded at 924 exahashes per second, according to mempool.space, meaning that this peak represented around 0.011% of the total network, or a success rate of one block every 64 days. In contrast, a hobbyist utilizing a single 100 TH/s machine would have much lower odds, approximately 1 in 62,750 each day, leading to an average wait time of 172 years.
Solo mining continues to occur, although the term encompasses a wide range of participants, from "hobby miners" with rigs costing less than $1,000, like the Bitaxe and FutureBit Apollo, to services such as Solo CKPool, which allows anonymous miners to participate without having to maintain their own complete Bitcoin node.
Recent Solo Mining Wins
The frequency of solo blocks has been consistent. In April, a miner with 70 TH/s earned $225,000, shortly after another miner claimed $210,000. Previous winners have received $266,000, $365,000, and $350,000. The varying dollar amounts correlate with Bitcoin's price fluctuations rather than changes in the mining odds. The reward remains fixed at 3.125 BTC until the next halving at block 1,050,000, which is around 89,000 blocks away and anticipated in the spring of 2028, when it will decrease to 1.5625 BTC.
CKPool enables solo miners to utilize its infrastructure without the need to operate a full node, taking a 2% fee from any blocks mined. Dr -ck also mentioned that this recent block was found “despite the chaos” caused by the recent Coldcard hardware wallet exploit, which has resulted in estimated losses of about $114 million.
As of Monday, Bitcoin was trading at approximately $63,700, reflecting a 1.1% increase for the day, according to CoinGecko data. On the prediction market Myriad, which is owned by Decrypt’s parent company Dastan, participants remain pessimistic regarding Bitcoin's future, assigning a 68% probability that the cryptocurrency will drop to $55,000.