A single Bitcoin (BTC) miner collected a full block reward on Jan. 13, claiming 3.125 BTC plus charges value near $300,000 at present costs.
The win wasn’t break up amongst hundreds of pool individuals. One deal with acquired the whole payout in an business dominated by industrial-scale mining operations commanding exahashes of compute energy.
However solo miners nonetheless handle to search out blocks, not as a result of the chances are favorable, however as a result of chance does not care about expectations.
The maths is brutal. Bitcoin’s community hashrate sits round 1,024 exahashes per second as of mid-January 2026, based on Hashrate Index. That is roughly 1.024 billion terahashes competing to unravel every block.
A passion miner working a 6 TH/s ASIC faces roughly a 1-in-170-million probability per block try. The anticipated wait time to discover a single block at that hashrate exceeds 3,000 years.
But solo wins preserve showing, with verified solo blocks hitting the chain each few weeks.
Mining is a Poisson course of (a statistics mannequin for random occasions occurring over time), a memoryless lottery the place every try is impartial. The hashrate determines the chance per block, however chance does not implement clean distribution over quick timescales.
A miner working a 6 TH/s miner for a month has a 0.0025% probability of discovering a minimum of one block. That is almost zero, nevertheless it’s not zero. Multiply that tiny chance throughout tens of hundreds of solo miners globally, and somebody hits the jackpot recurrently.
Solo mining tracker knowledge compiled by Bennet reveals 22 verified solo blocks mined over the previous 12 months, with a mean interval of 15.6 days between wins.
How solo mining truly works in 2026
Most solo wins come by means of solo mining companies like Solo CKPool, which supplies Stratum work coordination so particular person miners can compete for full block rewards with out working the whole stack themselves.
CKPool explicitly frames its service as “not a pool” within the financial sense, as there is not any reward splitting amongst individuals. Every miner’s hashrate competes independently for the total block reward.
If a miner related to Solo CKPool finds a legitimate block, the coinbase transaction pays that miner’s deal with immediately, minus a 2% service price. Presently, solely CKPool reveals round 20,950 customers contributing roughly 188 petahashes of hashrate.
A more moderen mannequin is run-your-own solo pool software program, exemplified by Public Pool within the Umbrel ecosystem. This open-source software lets miners run a solo mining pool utilizing their very own node, retaining the total reward in the event that they hit a block. It removes the service price however requires extra technical setup.
What all fashions share is that the miner receives the whole block reward for a profitable discover, fairly than a proportional share primarily based on contributed hashrate over time.
Both the miner wins every thing or wins nothing.
Odds are worse than anticipated, however higher than by no means
At Bitcoin’s present community hashrate of roughly 1,024 EH/s, a miner’s chance of discovering any given block equals their hashrate divided by the community’s whole hashrate.
For a 6 TH/s system, that is roughly one in 170 million per block.
Anticipated time to search out one block scales inversely with that chance. Since Bitcoin produces a block roughly each 10 minutes, a 6 TH/s miner would anticipate to attend round 3,247 years to discover a single block.
A extra highly effective 200 TH/s ASIC would nonetheless take round 97 years to achieve 1 TH/s. Even at 1 petahash, the anticipated wait drops to 19.5 years.
However anticipated time just isn’t the identical as chance over a set interval. A 6 TH/s miner has roughly a 0.0308% probability of discovering a minimum of one block over a full 12 months. But throughout hundreds of miners working related setups, just a few will beat these odds.
That is why solo mining wins are likely to cluster round mid-range hashrate ranges. A miner working 2.3 petahashes, far under industrial scale however effectively above hobbyist {hardware}, has roughly an 11% probability of discovering a block inside a 12 months.
Over a big sufficient inhabitants of miners in that vary, wins turn out to be predictable in mixture even when any particular person miner stays unlikely to succeed.
Latest solo wins present the sample holding
Solo block discoveries have maintained a gentle cadence over the previous 12 months. Block 920,440, mined on Oct. 23, 2025, was awarded to a Public Pool miner, who collected 3.125 BTC plus roughly 0.016 BTC in charges.
Block 924,569 on Nov. 21, 2025, delivered roughly 3.146 BTC to a solo miner working by means of CKPool infrastructure.
One dramatic instance occurred on Nov. 23, 2025, when a miner working simply 6 TH/s, going through odds of about 1 in 170 million per block, efficiently discovered a block by means of CKPool and claimed the total reward.
FutureBit, which manufactures compact Bitcoin mining units designed for dwelling use, has documented a number of solo wins from Apollo miners. These units sometimes run within the single-digit or low-double-digit terahash vary, being too small to generate significant pool rewards however nonetheless able to often discovering blocks.
Bennet’s solo mining tracker, which aggregates verified solo blocks throughout CKPool, Public Pool, FutureBit units, and different recognized solo setups, reveals 22 solo blocks discovered over the previous 12 months, up 29% year-over-year.
The common interval between solo wins throughout all tracked setups is 15.6 days, with the longest drought lasting 54 days. Whole rewards distributed to solo miners over that interval sum to roughly 69.35 BTC.
Why solo mining exists in any respect
The financial case for solo mining is weak if optimized for regular revenue.
Pool mining pays proportionally to the contributed hashrate, smoothing variance into predictable payouts. A miner contributing 200 TH/s to a pool receives roughly their share of that pool’s rewards, delivered repeatedly.
A solo miner with 200 TH/s receives nothing for years, then immediately receives 3.125 BTC plus charges.
The anticipated worth is an identical, each approaches converge to the identical long-term return per unit of hashrate, however the variance profile is totally completely different. Industrial miners have debt service, operational prices, and electrical energy contracts that require predictable income.
Variance is an unhedgeable threat.
Solo mining persists as a result of a subset of miners values the variance itself. Some run mining {hardware} as a passion or ideological dedication fairly than a profit-maximizing enterprise.
The psychological attraction of doubtless successful a full block outweighs the near-certainty of incomes nothing. Others deal with solo mining as a lottery ticket, economically irrational on an expected-value foundation, however defensible as leisure or a tail-risk guess.
Infrastructure enhancements have additionally lowered technical boundaries. Operating a solo mining operation in 2015 required working a full Bitcoin node, configuring Stratum software program, and managing community connectivity.
CKPool and Public Pool scale back that setup to pointing mining {hardware} at a URL or putting in a plug-and-play app. The better it turns into to solo mine, the extra miners will strive it, and the extra seen solo wins will turn out to be.
The block that simply hit
The Jan. 13 block represents the most recent knowledge level in a well-established sample.
A single deal with acquired the total block reward value near $300,000 at Bitcoin’s worth of round $94,000. The payout construction suggests the win got here by means of solo mining infrastructure. Nevertheless, with no public declare from the miner or a verified pool tag within the coinbase, the precise setup stays ambiguous.
If the miner used Solo CKPool, the online payout could be 98% of the whole after the service price. If it got here by means of Public Pool or correct solo infrastructure, the miner saved the total quantity.
Both manner, the win validates that solo mining continues to operate precisely as chance predicts: principally silent, often spectacular.
The community will produce one other 144 blocks as we speak. The overwhelming majority of rewards will stream to industrial mining operations. However someplace in that stream of blocks, one other solo miner will finally hit.
The percentages have not improved. The problem hasn’t dropped. The community retains rising. But chance stays detached to scale, and lightning nonetheless strikes.
