A solo Bitcoin miner successfully solved block 960,804 at 02:11 UTC on Monday, earning a reward of approximately $200,000.

The block paid out a total of 3.15689830 BTC, comprising the standard 3.125 BTC block subsidy plus 0.032 BTC in transaction fees generated by the 4,243 transactions included in the block. The pseudonymous developer known as Dr-ck confirmed it was the 317th solo block discovered through CKPool, identifying the winning address as bc1qdyqjq9qccp34pyv3kxmsrkn7p0amnsqqy8kdeq.

Congratulations to miner bc1qdyqjq9qccp34pyv3kxmsrkn7p0amnsqqy8kdeq with a wildly variable - presumably rental - hashrate peaking at 100PH for solving the 317th solo block at ! Despite the chaos from the hardware wallet exploit, bitcoin just keeps on doing...

— Dr-ck (@ckpooldev) August 3, 2026

The Odds

Bitcoin mining requires machines to compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle, with the winner receiving the block reward—currently set at 3.125 BTC, a figure that underwent its most recent halving in April 2024 and will remain at this level until the next cut roughly four years later.

This particular win was less of a long shot than most solo finds. Dr-ck described the winning miner as operating "a wildly variable - presumably rental - hashrate peaking at 100PH." According to mempool.space, the network hashrate stood at 924 exahashes per second, meaning that peak hashrate represented approximately 0.011% of the total network—equating to an expected solo block roughly every 64 days. By comparison, a hobbyist running a single 100 TH/s machine operates at one-thousandth of that capacity, facing odds of approximately 1 in 62,750 on any given day, or an average wait time of 172 years.

The distinction between solo and pool mining is fundamental to understanding these outcomes. In a conventional mining pool, participants combine hashrate and split rewards proportionally, receiving small but steady payouts. Solo miners forgo that consistency for a lottery-style shot at the full block reward—a structure that becomes increasingly improbable as the network's total hashrate has grown to nearly a zettahash per second, driven by industrial-scale facilities running thousands of machines.

Solo block discoveries continue to occur, though the category spans a wide range of participants—from "hobby miners" using sub-$1,000 rigs such as the Bitaxe and FutureBit Apollo, to services like Solo CKPool, which enables anonymous miners to begin mining without running their own full Bitcoin node.

Recent Solo Block Winners

Solo blocks have been found at a consistent pace. In April, a miner running 70 TH/s earned $225,000, just one week after another solo miner claimed $210,000. Earlier discoveries yielded $266,000, $365,000, and $350,000. The fluctuating dollar values reflect changes in Bitcoin's market price rather than any shift in mining odds.

The block reward is fixed at 3.125 BTC until the next halving event at block 1,050,000—approximately 89,000 blocks away and anticipated in the spring of 2028—when it will decrease to 1.5625 BTC. Each halving compresses revenue for miners across the board, intensifying the pressure on smaller operators and raising the capital threshold for profitable participation.

CKPool allows solo miners to direct their hardware at its infrastructure without operating a full node, charging a 2% fee on any block found. Dr-ck noted that this block was solved "despite the chaos" stemming from the recent Coldcard hardware wallet exploit, which has resulted in estimated losses of $114 million.

Bitcoin was trading at approximately $63,700 on Monday, up 1.1% on the day, according to CoinGecko data. On the prediction market Myriad, owned by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, users remain bearish on Bitcoin's near-term outlook, assigning a 68% probability to the cryptocurrency's next major move being a decline to $55,000.