Solo CKPool Miner Snags $282K Bitcoin Block as Network Hashrate Tops 1 ZH/s

A solo miner with roughly 270 TH/s just landed a 3.13 BTC payout—about $282,000—after solving a Bitcoin block through Solo CKPool. The pool’s admin pegged the odds near 1 in 30,000 for this hit, and flagged it as the 311th solo block solved on the service. It’s the fourth Solo CKPool success in the past three weeks; before that, you’d have to rewind to September to find the prior win.

The detail that matters here isn’t the headline payout—it’s the optionality that CKPool gives small operators. Instead of smoothing earnings through a conventional pool, miners can accept extreme variance and maintain upside to the full block subsidy and fees, paying a 2% cut only if they win. In this case, that fee was about 0.062 BTC (~$5,734). For individuals unwilling or unable to shoulder the overhead of running a full, expensive mining setup, CKPool reduces operational friction while preserving the “lottery ticket” convexity that draws many hobbyists in.

The math is unforgiving. With the network now averaging over 1 ZH/s in the last 24 hours—up from roughly 736 EH/s on this day a year ago—a 270 TH/s operator contributes a near-microscopic slice of total hashrate. Back-of-the-envelope, that kind of footprint implies a win expectancy measured in decades, not months. Yet this is precisely why some miners still choose the solo path: asymmetric payoff, low ongoing fees, and the psychological pull of a big, clean hit that doesn’t get diluted by pool share accounting.

Economically, the payout composition reinforces the dynamic. Today’s block reward is 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees; this miner’s total came to 3.13 BTC, reflecting modest fee capture on that block. When fee markets are quiet, the solo upside narrows; when mempools surge, it expands. CKPool’s cumulative track record—5,553 BTC earned across its miners, roughly $511 million at current prices—shows that the model can work over time even as individual outcomes remain highly volatile.

The broader environment is getting tougher. Proof-of-work mining demands specialized hardware and meaningful energy budgets, and the industry’s hashrate stair-steps higher almost every year. It’s why many observers liken solo mining to buying lottery tickets. That narrative has knock-on effects: some publicly traded miners are reconsidering their exposure. In November, Bitfarms said it would wind down Bitcoin mining after a $46 million loss and pivot toward supplying compute for AI workloads. The market’s telling you where capital believes the steadier cash flows may be.

From a strategy lens, solo mining via CKPool functions like a low-carry call option on fee spikes and luck. It can make sense for a subset of operators who value sovereignty over predictable income, or who view energy and hardware access as sunk costs they want to keep optional. But variance can be brutal; one big win doesn’t change the base rate. For those optimizing for stability, traditional pools still dominate.

Bitcoin itself is steady over the past day, trading around $90,062. Price stability doesn’t blunt the appeal of a $282,000 block; it just reframes the question: are you in this game to grind predictable basis points, or to accept long droughts in exchange for rare, outsized paydays? Services like CKPool keep that choice alive as the network scales.