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In summary
- Solo Bitcoin miners are having a great year, despite the increasing difficulty of mining the digital currency.
- An individual miner managed to process a block on the Bitcoin network on Thursday, earning 3,329 BTC, valued at $222,438.
- Bitcoin mining has become more difficult and is now dominated by large companies, but lone miners occasionally get lucky and process blocks.
Solo Bitcoin miners are having a great year, it seems, despite the increasing difficulty of mining the digital currency.
An individual miner managed to process a block on the largest Cryptocurrency network on Thursday, taking home 3,329 Bitcoin in total, worth $222,438 as a reward. Blockchain data shows that the block contained 3,285 transactions and was processed at 4:18 a.m. Eastern Time.
Bitcoin mining is the energy-intensive work of processing blocks on the cryptocurrency network. The blocks are filled with transaction data and are part of the Bitcoin blockchain, a nearly impenetrable ledger and one of the most secure computer networks on Earth.
When blocks are processed, miners are awarded newly minted coins: a fixed reward of 3,125 BTC, along with transaction fees paid by those using the network during that particular block window.
In the past, almost anyone could participate in the mining process and mint new coins at home. But as the network has grown, the difficulty of mining has increased substantially. Now, mining operations are usually carried out in warehouses by large companies and consume a lot of electricity.
Bitcoin mining became much more difficult in April, when the network experienced its quadrennial halving: an event built into the network code that halves miner rewards every four years.
Miners now have to work harder and receive less Bitcoin for their work. Before the halving event in April, miners received 6.25 Bitcoin for each block they processed. Before that, the reward was 12.5 Bitcoin; and before that, 25 BTC. When the Bitcoin blockchain was first launched in 2009, the mining subsidy was 50 Bitcoin.
While miners receive less Bitcoin every four years, they are able to manage their operations and stay in the game because the value of the cryptocurrency has increased since the network’s inception. Since Bitcoin’s first halving in 2012, the coin has risen 548,604% to a current price of around $67,650.
But solo miners do exist and occasionally, although rarely, they can sometimes get lucky and process a block by themselves. So far this year, solo miners have seen big gains in April, July, August, and September ahead of this Thursday’s solo reward.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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