A solo Bitcoin (BTC) miner has achieved the nearly impossible — successfully mining a full Bitcoin block despite astronomical odds. This rare event rewarded the miner with 3.15 BTC, valued at approximately $252,000 at the time the block was processed.
Bitcoin mining is a competitive process where thousands of devices worldwide compete to add a new block to the blockchain by solving complex mathematical puzzles. Usually, large mining farms with powerful computing resources dominate this field. However, in this exceptional case, luck was on the side of a tiny mining device — the BitAxe miner.
Rhino Bitcoin App co-founder Lyle Hauser shared the story on X, attaching a video of the tiny device at work. According to Hauser, the miner has a hash rate of just 500 GH/s, compared to Bitcoin’s total network hash rate of 820 EH/s. With such a low power output, the probability of mining a block was roughly 1 in 30,000 years.
BitAxe's Mining Machine. Source: Lyle Hauser
Why This Case Is Unique
Bitcoin operates on a Proof-of-Work (PoW) system, where computing power directly influences mining success. The higher a miner’s hash rate, the greater their chances of solving a block and earning the reward.
For a low-powered device like BitAxe, the chance of finding a block alone is astronomically low — about 1 in 1.6 billion. To put that into perspective, the odds of winning a lottery with 1 in 9.8 million odds are 1 in 163 if you buy 163 tickets. In other words, this solo miner’s success is equivalent to winning the lottery multiple times in a row.
Block Mining Data. Source: mempool.space
The Economic Reality of Solo Mining
While this story is a remarkable anomaly, it doesn’t change the overall landscape of Bitcoin mining. Solo mining is generally unprofitable for most participants. Even with energy-efficient hardware, electricity costs often exceed potential earnings.
This is why most miners join mining pools, where rewards are distributed proportionally to their contributed hash rate. While this reduces the possibility of large individual payouts, it ensures more stable and predictable income.
Though extremely rare, cases like this prove that solo mining is still technically possible and highlight Bitcoin’s decentralized nature, where even small-scale miners have a theoretical chance to compete with massive industrial mining operations.
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