A Bitcoin mining device with a hashrate of only 500 gigahashes per second (Gh/s) managed to mine a block on July 24, according to an X post from Bitcoin mining device retailer Altair Technology. The block is worth approximately $206,000 based on the current Bitcoin price.
“Congratulations to the miner who likely mined the first solo BTC block with a Bitaxe on @ckpooldev with ~500 Gh hashrate!” the post stated.
The device, called a “Bitaxe,” and produced by D-Central Technologies, is approximately the size of a human hand, as shown by YouTube channel “How Much?”
The device was reportedly connected to node infrastructure service Solo CKPool when it successfully mined the block. On CKPool’s website, it describes itself as “a service to allow miners to mine solo as you cannot mine directly to a bitcoin core node[.]” The service claims that it is “NOT a pool despite its name.”
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Blockchain data shows that Bitcoin block number 853742, mined at 11:43 am UTC on July 24, produced by this “pool.” According to Altair, it was this block that was mined by the 500 Gh/s Bitaxe device.
The current total hash power of the Bitcoin network is 552.49 Exahashes per second (Eh/s), according to Bitcoin analytics platform CoinWarz. This is equivalent to 552,490,000,000 Gh/s or approximately 1.1 billion times the power of the Bitaxe device that mined this block. This implies that roughly every ten minutes, the device has a 1 out of 1.1 billion chance of mining a block.
Bitcoin miners consume electricity even if they do not successfully mine a block, which operators must pay for out of their own funds. For this reason, solo Bitcoin mining is often compared to a lottery. But for this particular solo miner, the decision to participate appears to have paid off.
A solo Bitcoin miner also mined a block in April. However, that operator used a device with a power of 120 petahashes per second (Ph/s) or 120,000,000 Gh/s, which is 240 times the processing power of the Bitaxe.
Most Bitcoin mining operators pool their hash power with other operators and equally distribute the rewards from the pool based on the amount of hash power contributed by each operator. But some Bitcoin enthusiasts worry that this practice is leading to the centralization of the Bitcoin network and champion solo mining as a possible alternative.
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