A random bitcoin miner hits it big with a relatively low hashrate.
Bitcoin’s 275th block was mined by a solo miner operating with hardware that has a mining power of about 17 terahashes (TH). The low hash rate of the miner points to the fact that he could be a private individual mining bitcoins with a single S9 miner. The surprising reward could be termed a fortunate happenstance, which happens very rarely.
The miner solved the block on June 9, 2023, possibly accomplishing with low hash power what is known to have been the exclusive preserve of big mining farms such as those owned by mining giant Bitmain.
A miner of this size would only solve a block once every 450 years
A post by Dr. Con Kolivas of CKPool.org, the mining pool where the miner operates, said that the probability of a miner with such a low hashrate solving a block is about 1 in 5,500. The mining pool wrote in its report of the event,
“Congratulations to miner 151XTfHBfaDqoNWGGeYobNX2YzFFWuB5YD with only 17TH for solving the 275th block at solo.ckpool.org! That is likely a single S9 miner. A miner of this size would only solve a block once every 450 years on average. https://explorer.btc.com/btc/block/793607 “
Explaining further, Kolivas said,
“Here is what the CKpool console showed when he solved the block. Assuming they have been mining continuously on the same address, they solved the block after only 9G shares. At the current diff of 51T, that is a one in 5,500 chance.”
Average luck for pool
He added that the block reward is the first at the mining pool after their code was reworked. The new code is what all the miners in the pool use, but address 151XTfHBfaDqoNWGGeYobNX2YzFFWuB5YD just got luckier than the rest.
Kolivas said that, on a general note, their mining pool has not experienced anything out of the ordinary such as this. He said that they were even luckier two years ago than they are now.
“Over all its years, it has averaged normal luck, though the last 2 years have been luckier than normal, but I haven’t worked out the numbers.”
