Someone very lucky managed to get ahead of the big mining companies on Tuesday (11) and added — single-handedly — an entire block to the bitcoin blockchain. With that, he got the reward of 6.25 BTC, about $273 thousand at the current exchange rate.

Bitcoin miner is lucky and earns 6.25 BTC by adding a block to the network by himself

What stands out here is the computational power that the miner used to do the feat: 126 terahash (TH/s). This number is extremely low when compared to that dedicated by large companies.

Marathon, for example, currently has over 32,000 machines that together produce 3.5 exahash per second to mine bitcoin — 1 exahash is a quintillion H/s; and 1 terahash, one trillion H/s.

It is not known who was the winner who managed to add block 718,124. According to data from BTC.com, in addition to the miner keeping the newly created bitcoins, he also earned 0.104 BTC from fees paid on the nearly 3,000 transactions included in the block, about $4,500.

Congratulations to a bitcoin miner with only 126TH who solved a solo block on https://t.co/UWgBvLBGsc see: https://t.co/JUMEFaYKfo

— Dr. Con Kolivas (@ckpooldev) January 11, 2022

The first to publicize the rare event was Con Kolivas, the creator of the Solo CK pool — which the miner is a part of.

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Solo CK is different from traditional mining pools that share the rewards evenly among all participants when a block is found. On the rare occasion that an independent Solo CK miner finds a block, the reward is all his own.

In response to a Twitter user who asked how often it is for someone with such low computing power to solve a block of bitcoin, Kolivas explained:

“For the miner involved it’s a once in a lifetime chance. Last time a miner this small solved a block on my pool was only a year ago though. It’s usually larger miners that solve blocks statistically but there is no reason even the smallest miner can’t solve one.”

The last time a Solo CK miner found a block was on July 2, 2021. At that time, the lucky one added block 689,382 to the network using only 100 TH/s, a computational power that, according to Kolivas, “wouldn’t solve a problem.” block in more than 100 years”.