cryptopolitan.com
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.
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.