A solo Bitcoin miner using a compact Bitaxe device mined block 957,382 and received 3.13823506 BTC, worth approximately $200,590 at the time, after competing against industrial mining operations with a machine producing less than 1 TH/s.
Mempool’s block data records the block at 06:30:34 UTC on July 10, 2026, corresponding to late July 9 in some North American time zones. The reward consisted of the 3.125 BTC block subsidy and approximately 0.01323506 BTC in transaction fees.
Key Takeaways
- The miner received the entire 3.13823506 BTC block reward because the device was operating in solo mode rather than sharing the payout with other miners.
- The Public Pool dashboard displayed a hashrate of 995.2 GH/s and an active-session uptime of eight hours.
- The miner produced a share with difficulty of 294.14T, more than double the Bitcoin network requirement of 133.87T at the time.
- Solo mining offers the full reward and greater independence, but it replaces regular pool income with an extremely small probability of receiving anything at all.
The Hash That Beat the Network Target
Bitcoin miners repeatedly change data inside a candidate block header and calculate its hash. A block is valid only when the resulting hash falls below the target set by the network’s current mining difficulty.
The miner behind block 957,382 produced a result with a recorded difficulty of 294.14 trillion. Bitcoin’s network difficulty stood at 133.87 trillion, meaning the submitted hash comfortably exceeded the minimum work required for a valid block.
The comparison explains how a small device can defeat machines operating at industrial scale. Bitcoin does not reserve blocks for the largest miner. Every valid hash attempt has a chance of meeting the target. More hashrate does not create a different type of attempt; it simply gives the miner far more attempts every second.
The Bitaxe generated approximately 995.2 billion hashes per second according to the displayed Public Pool data. Large industrial miners operate hundreds of times faster individually, while entire commercial facilities may control several exahashes per second. The Bitaxe therefore held a valid chance, but an exceptionally small one.
How Solo Bitcoin Mining Works
Bitcoin’s developer documentation distinguishes between solo and pooled mining primarily through the way rewards and risk are distributed.
Mining software receives the information needed to build a candidate block, including the previous block hash, transactions, timestamp and target difficulty. The ASIC then searches through nonce values and other adjustable data, producing hashes until new work arrives or one of the results satisfies the network target.
In a conventional mining pool, miners also submit results that meet an easier pool-defined target. These results, known as shares, do not normally qualify as Bitcoin blocks. They allow the pool to measure how much computing work each participant contributed and divide revenue accordingly.
A pooled miner therefore receives smaller and more frequent payments based on submitted work. The miner who finds the actual block does not keep the full reward because it is distributed among pool participants under the pool’s payout system. Solo mining removes that revenue-sharing arrangement. Shares may still be recorded to measure the device’s activity, but they do not generate proportional income. The miner receives a payment only when one submitted hash also satisfies Bitcoin’s much harder network target.
Public Pool Coordinated the Work Without Splitting the Reward
The winning device was connected to Public Pool, an open-source service that supports both solo mining and shared PPLNS mining. Despite the use of the word “pool,” its solo mode does not combine the participant’s reward with those of other miners. Public Pool supplies mining work through the Stratum protocol, tracks submitted shares and broadcasts a valid block when one is found. The reward in solo mode is directed to the Bitcoin address configured by the miner.
This arrangement is more accurately described as solo-reward mining through a shared coordinator. It is simpler than operating the entire mining stack independently, but it is not identical to fully sovereign solo mining through a personal Bitcoin node and self-hosted pool server.
Public Pool is also available as open-source software, allowing miners to run the service against their own Bitcoin node rather than depend on the hosted instance.
Why Solo Mining Can Be Better
The clearest advantage is payout concentration. The successful miner keeps the complete block subsidy and transaction fees rather than receiving only a proportional share. In this case, a single successful hash generated more than 3.13 BTC for one address.
Solo mining can also reduce dependence on large custodial pool operators. A properly configured solo setup can send the block reward directly to the miner’s address, avoiding an internal pool balance, withdrawal threshold or later payout process. Running the mining server through a personal node offers additional control. The operator can verify the chain independently, construct block templates locally and avoid delegating all transaction-selection decisions to a major commercial pool.
Smaller independent operators also broaden the number of parties capable of producing blocks. That can support mining decentralization, although the effect depends on the setup. Connecting to a hosted solo service decentralizes ownership of the hashrate and reward, but self-hosting the server and node provides stronger operational independence.
Why Is It Much Harder
The full reward comes with maximum payment variance. Pool miners are compensated for easier shares because those shares demonstrate contributed work. Solo miners receive nothing for near misses, regardless of how long the hardware has operated or how much electricity it has consumed.
Using the displayed hashrate of 995.2 GH/s and network difficulty of 133.87T, the expected waiting time for one block was approximately 18,300 years. That does not mean the device must run for 18,300 years before winning. Each hash is an independent attempt, allowing a miner to find a block immediately, after several decades or never.
Under the same assumptions, the probability of finding a block during an eight-hour period was approximately one in 20 million. The win was therefore possible under Bitcoin’s normal rules, but it should not be interpreted as evidence that low-powered solo mining has become a reliable income strategy. The eight-hour figure also requires qualification. The Public Pool dashboard showed eight hours of uptime for the displayed worker session. A reconnect, restart or configuration change can reset session uptime, so the figure does not necessarily establish the device’s complete lifetime mining history.
Other solo-mining wins show that rare outcomes are not limited to extremely low-powered devices. On April 2, 2026, a solo miner operating at approximately 250 TH/s – roughly 250 times the hashrate displayed by the winning Bitaxe setup – found a block and received 3.139 BTC worth an estimated $210,000. That operation was comparable to only one or two modern mining units, reinforcing how a relatively small participant can still find a block while showing that such outcomes remain statistically unusual even with substantially more computing power.
A Single Industrial ASIC Chip Inside a Home Miner
The official Bitaxe Gamma repository describes the device as a fully open-source Bitcoin ASIC miner built around one BM1370 chip—the same chip family used inside Bitmain’s Antminer S21 Pro. An Antminer S21 Pro distributes 195 BM1370 chips across three hashboards and has a nominal output of approximately 234 TH/s. The Bitaxe Gamma uses one chip, giving it a nominal output near 1.2 TH/s while keeping the device small enough for home operation.
The winning dashboard showed 995.2 GH/s, slightly below the project’s nominal figure but consistent with a single-chip hobbyist miner. The design requires active cooling and a power supply capable of providing more than 20 watts, although exact consumption depends on frequency, voltage and cooling settings.
The open-source design makes the Bitaxe useful as an educational and decentralization tool. Owners can inspect the hardware files and firmware, modify operating parameters and connect the miner to a pool or node of their choice. Those benefits are separate from profitability: open hardware lowers the barrier to participating in mining, but it does not change the probability imposed by network difficulty.
The Win Demonstrates Possibility, Not Profitability
Block 957,382 proves that a single-chip home miner can produce a network-valid Bitcoin block. It does not show that a $60-to-$150 device can reliably generate six-figure returns.
Over a sufficiently long period, the expected reward from a miner is determined largely by its share of total network hashrate. Solo and pooled mining do not materially change that underlying expected share before fees. They change how the outcome is distributed.
A mining pool converts the expected value into smaller, more regular payments. Solo mining concentrates the same uncertain output into rare all-or-nothing events. The Bitaxe owner captured the favorable extreme of that distribution: one valid hash delivered the full subsidy and fees after a session in which the statistical probability of success was close to zero.
The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice.
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