In a stunning feat of luck, a solo Bitcoin miner has successfully mined an entire block against staggering odds, claiming a full reward of over $222,000. The miner, using the address bc1q~edvj, solved Bitcoin block 944,306 early on April 9, 2026, utilizing solo mining software from CKpool.
The miner collected a total of 3.128 BTC, valued at approximately $222,012 at the time. This reward consisted of the standard 3.125 BTC block subsidy (worth about $221,800) and an additional 0.003 BTC ($212) in transaction fees. Data from the blockchain explorer Mempool confirmed the achievement.
Con Kolivas, the developer behind CKpool, highlighted the astronomical odds on social media. He stated that a miner with the winning hardware's hash rate of just 70 terahashes per second (TH/s) had only a 1 in ~100,000 chance of solving a block per day, equivalent to an expected success rate of once every 300 years. This hash rate is comparable to a single 2019-era Bitmain Antminer S17+ machine and represents a minuscule 0.0000069% of the Bitcoin network's total estimated hash rate of 1.02 zettahashes per second (ZH/s).
CKpool operates differently from conventional mining pools. While it is technically a pool, the vast majority of its users employ it for solo mining. This setup allows individuals to mine independently, accepting a much lower probability of finding a block but keeping the entire reward for themselves (minus a small fee), without the need to run their own full infrastructure.
This event is not an isolated incident but part of a recent trend of improbable solo mining victories. Just the week prior, another CKpool user ended a 33-day drought by mining block 943,411 for a reward of roughly $210,000. In September and December of the previous year, solo miners also beat 1-in-100-year and 1-in-82-year odds to win $350,000 and $285,000 block rewards, respectively.
The story underscores the enduring, albeit highly improbable, dream of decentralized Bitcoin mining. It serves as a powerful proof-of-concept for the network's permissionless design, demonstrating that individuals can still compete against industrial-scale operations like Bitdeer and Marathon Digital Holdings, which manage hash rates in the exahashes per second range. However, experts note that solo mining remains an economically irrational endeavor for most, given the extreme variance in rewards compared to the consistent, smaller payouts from pooled mining.
