How did a lone Bitcoin miner beat one-in-ten-million odds to discover a block value $347,000, and what does it reveal about solo mining in 2025?
Abstract
- A Reddit person claimed to have mined Bitcoin block 920440 solo utilizing an Umbrel Mini, incomes roughly $347,000 in rewards and charges.
- Blockchain information confirmed the declare, displaying a novel Coinbase tag and no hint of any massive mining pool involvement.
- At present community ranges of over 1 zettahash per second, a solo miner’s probability of discovering a block is about one in ten million.
- Industrial-scale swimming pools now management roughly 75–85% of worldwide block manufacturing, making solo mining in 2025 extra of an experiment than a supply of revenue.
Desk of Contents
Solo miner claims uncommon Bitcoin win
A current publish on Reddit’s r/Bitcoin group caught the eye of miners internationally. A person claimed they’d mined a Bitcoin block solely on their very own with none assist from a big mining pool.
The block was numbered 920440 and carried the usual reward of three.125 Bitcoin (BTC) together with transaction charges, amounting to round $347,000 at the moment.
Mining a Bitcoin block includes fixing a cryptographic puzzle that calls for huge computing energy. Every miner repeatedly assessments random numbers, generally known as nonces, till one produces a hash that meets the community’s problem goal.
The problem mechanically adjusts to make sure a brand new block is found roughly each ten minutes, no matter what number of miners are competing. A solo miner works independently, protecting each the chance and the complete reward, which makes this course of extremely unpredictable.
As we speak, massive mining swimming pools dominate the community. A small house miner working just a few machines contributes just some terahashes, giving them odds as little as one in 200 million of discovering a block.
Even so, it isn’t solely not possible. CKPool, a platform that allows unbiased miners to function solo with out sharing rewards, has recorded a number of uncommon wins over the previous decade.
The Reddit person mentioned they have been utilizing an Umbrel Mini gadget for mining and have been surprised to see the message seem on their display screen, “You discovered a block.” Group members flooded the thread with congratulations, whereas others urged verification via blockchain information earlier than celebrating.
Blockchain information matches the Reddit declare
Each Bitcoin block is publicly seen and carries precise particulars such because the time it was mined, the entity that mined it, the problem stage, and the whole reward earned. A assessment of block 920440 confirmed that its traits carefully matched the Reddit person’s account.
The block was mined on Oct. 23 at 19:32 UTC and contained a brief textual content observe generally known as a Coinbase tag that learn “Public Pool on Umbrel.”
On-chain information for block 920440 | Supply: Bitaps
This tag, inserted by the miner’s software program, identifies the setup answerable for producing the block and matched the Reddit person’s declare of mining via a public pool on an Umbrel Mini gadget.
No main business pool makes use of that tag. Blocks mined by massive operators equivalent to Foundry USA, F2Pool, or AntPool show their names clearly within the Coinbase message.
The absence of these names and the presence of a customized tag counsel that this block was certainly mined by a person relatively than a pool.
Uncooked community information reveals how uncommon that occasion was. The block problem was about 2.07 quadrillion, whereas the whole community problem hovered close to 146 trillion.
At that stage, a house miner producing one terahash per second would, on common, must mine for tons of of hundreds of thousands of years earlier than discovering a block.
Even so, likelihood permits for inconceivable outcomes. Bitcoin’s proof-of-work mechanism ensures that each participant, irrespective of how small, retains a measurable probability of success.
The block itself confirmed no anomalies. It contained greater than 2100 transactions, about 89% of which used SegWit, which aligns with common community conduct.
Taken collectively, all of the technical indicators level to at least one conclusion. A miner working a solo Umbrel-based setup seems to have genuinely mined block 920440, an final result that defied the astronomical odds stacked in opposition to it.
Why solo mining is almost not possible
Mining a Bitcoin block would possibly sound like an equal recreation, however the scale at which it occurs right now tells a really completely different story. Each miner within the community is making an attempt to resolve the identical cryptographic puzzle, but their instruments, prices, and probabilities of success differ enormously.
A house miner normally begins small. The setup would possibly contain one or two machines generally known as ASICs, quick for Utility-Particular Built-in Circuits.
ASICs are constructed to carry out a single job, fixing Bitcoin’s proof-of-work equation. Every ASIC can carry out trillions of calculations per second, however even that stage of energy is tiny in contrast with the worldwide community.
Your complete Bitcoin community operates at round 1.035 zettahashes per second as of Oct. 27, which means it performs a couple of sextillion (10²¹) calculations each second.
Bitcoin hash fee chart | Supply: Coinwarz
One calculation reveals that in case you run a top-tier ASIC producing 234 terahashes per second whereas the community stays at its present stage, you may have a couple of 0.0000222% probability, or roughly 2.2 in 10 million odds, of discovering a block inside a ten-minute window.
Every ASIC consumes massive quantities of power and releases steady warmth, so miners make investments closely in cooling methods to stop {hardware} harm and preserve effectivity.
To offset these prices, industrial miners want areas the place electrical energy costs are extraordinarily low, equivalent to elements of Texas, Kazakhstan, or Iceland, the place renewable or surplus power is obtainable.
Operators in these areas purchase {hardware} in bulk, typically 1000’s of models without delay, safe long-term electrical energy contracts, and use real-time monitoring methods to handle energy masses and preserve efficiency stability.
As operations broaden, many massive miners select to mix their computing energy via mining swimming pools, the place 1000’s of individuals contribute assets and obtain smaller however regular payouts as a substitute of ready for a uncommon full block reward.
In 2025, practically the complete community’s hashrate is concentrated amongst just a few massive swimming pools equivalent to Foundry USA, Antpool, F2Pool, and ViaBTC.
Information from public trackers reveals that these prime 5 collectively account for about 75-85% of worldwide block manufacturing at any given time, whereas smaller or unidentified swimming pools deal with the rest.
The position of home-based miners is statistically negligible. Only some hundred solo-mined blocks have ever been recorded in Bitcoin’s historical past, displaying how extraordinarily uncommon it’s for a person miner to seek out one independently.
Paying commonplace residential charges makes house mining largely unprofitable until somebody will get terribly fortunate and discovers a block.
In easy phrases, virtually each block on the community right now is produced by massive skilled operations, whereas unbiased achievements just like the Umbrel Mini case stay uncommon exceptions.
Anybody excited about house mining in 2025 must deal with it as a hands-on experiment relatively than an funding. It affords perception into how Bitcoin stays safe and decentralized, however it isn’t a path to dependable revenue.
