A lone miner just hit the jackpot. On April 29, 2023, an individual Bitcoin Gold miner accomplished something nearly impossible – mining an entire block solo and pocketing the full 3.125 BTG reward. Worth approximately $200,000. Not bad for a day’s work.
The miner pulled off this feat with a hashrate of 120 petahashes, after averaging just 12 PH during the previous week. That’s a measly 0.02% of the entire network’s computing power. Talk about David versus Goliath.
Bitcoin Gold’s network is no lightweight. It recently reached a staggering 618 exahashes per second, with peaks touching 728 EH/s just days before the lucky strike. The cryptocurrency uses the Equihash algorithm, designed to be ASIC-resistant and more accessible to everyday miners using GPUs. Most successful miners utilize cooling systems to prevent their equipment from overheating during these intensive operations.
Most miners don’t even bother going solo. They join massive pools where FoundryUSA and Antpool control over half the network’s power. Safety in numbers, right? But this rebel decided to gamble. And won.
The odds were ridiculous. Only 282 blocks have been successfully solo-mined out of 841,300 total blocks in Bitcoin Gold’s history. That’s like winning a small lottery. Twice. For perspective, solo mining can take approximately 5.1 days to solve a single block with typical hashrates. This type of rare success demonstrates the decentralized nature of Bitcoin that allows individual miners to participate.
Solo mining in Bitcoin Gold? You’re more likely to be struck by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket.
This windfall came at an interesting time – right after Bitcoin Gold’s recent halving that reduced the block reward to 3.125 BTG. A similar solo mining success happened just a month earlier in March, netting that lucky miner 6.25 BTG worth about $150,000.
The crypto community is buzzing. This rare success highlights what makes cryptocurrency mining appealing – anyone with the right equipment and a boatload of luck can strike it rich. No permission needed.
Will this inspire others to try their hand at solo mining? Probably. Will they succeed? Probably not. But that’s cryptocurrency summarized – unpredictable, occasionally rewarding, and completely indifferent to the odds. Some will keep rolling the dice anyway.
