In an industry that leverage on large-scale mining pools and powerful hashing power, a solo Bitcoin miner is determined to show that he could achieve the same feat with just a cheap, pocket-sized crypto mining rig.

This miner became the 297th solo participant to mine a Bitcoin block through the solo.ckpool mining pool, securing a massive $263,000 reward, according to solo.ckpool developer, Con Kolivas.

Hiting the jackpot despite a 1 in a million feat

Kolivas revealed that the miner was using a 480-gigahash per second (GH/s) Bitaxe machine, a relatively modest setup compared to industrial-scale mining operations, which often deploy machines exceeding 230,000 GH/s.

Kolivas also revealed that this miner had achieved a 1-in-a-million feat as he had mined a block as a solo miner. This device solved the #887,212 block and won $263K worth of BTC.

The block was mined on March 10 at 7.22pm UTC, and the miner was rewarded with 3.15 BTC, which includes a 3.125 BTC mining reward plus an additional 0.025 BTC transaction fee.

This marks an extraordinary feat, as it is speculated that the miner was using the least powerful model in the brand, called the "Generic Solo Miner Lucky Miner."

A 1,200 gigahash Bitaxe Gamma 601 machine, which is three times more powerful than the one used by the miner, would have cost three times of what the miner was using.

David in front of Golliath

In today's crypto-mining industry, corporations often choose mining devices with more than 230,000 GH/s of power. This has made it almost impossible for lone miners, and even those with tiny mining rigs to solve a block.

This is especially true when we take into account the size of the mining device the lone miner was using, the chance is lower than one in a million per day. This equals to 3,500 years of mining for an average miner using this device.

Furthermore, many miners also often choose to mine from large Bitcoin mining pools. As such, most of the hashrate from public BTC Bitfarms, Cipher, and Hut8 is directed to the Foundry USA.

The current largest mining corporation is held be the largest mining corporation, MARA Holdings. MARA also has the highest market cap and hashrate, gaining the top position in mining.

Bitcoin mining difficulties are hitting new highs. Can solo miners even survive?

The success story of this miner comes at a time when mining has become more competitive than ever. Hashrate Asset Group posted a report on its social media account, where it shows how the Bitcoin hashrate hit 807. 517EH/s in the past week.

This marks a 1.22% increase, suggesting that there could be new miners who are entering the network. But this would also imply that the chances of solo miners solving a block are now even lower than before.

To make matters worse, mining difficulty has also recently increased. The BTC mining difficulty now stands at 112.150T, meaning it is now harder to solve a block.

Although the Bitcoin block reward saw a 0.09% increase, the average price of Bitcoin decreased from $86.713.20 to $85,069.54. This decline is more important to individual miners as they bank on BTC price growth to offset the hardware costs.

In a world that is dominated by large firms, it seems that the chances of survival for individual miners is very very low. While cost-efficient devices like Bitaxe can make solo mining profitable in rare cases, it is not a reliable source of steady income.

Mining pools offer a more consistent approach, providing frequent but smaller payouts and reducing financial risk. As the upcoming Bitcoin halving cuts block rewards, miners must focus on efficiency and optimization to sustain profitability in an increasingly competitive landscape.