Another solo Bitcoin miner defied the odds last week, processing a block and bagging a 3.125 BTC ($87,736.00) reward. At the time—including the transaction fees—that was a $259,637 payday. And it was one of several such solo scores in recent months.
Was the miner lucky? Is solo mining becoming more common? And can an average Joe hook up a hobby mining machine and succeed with minimal resources compared to publicly traded miners?
The answers vary. Solo miners, a term used to describe everything from individual hobby miners to groups that prefer to operate privately and discreetly, are succeeding more often, although not dramatically so—and the totals are unlikely to spike significantly.
Mining without the support of a big pool is "still like playing the lottery," said Scott Norris, CEO of independent Bitcoin miner Optiminer.
In 2022, solo miners using the Solo CKPool—a service allowing anonymous miners to get started with a mining hook-up, without the need to run their own full Bitcoin node—solved seven blocks. In 2023, the number jumped to 12 blocks. Fast forward to 2024, and ...
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