TL;DR
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A lucky ‘solo miner’ just had one $160k+ payday.
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How lucky were they? “A miner of this size would only solve a block [roughly] once every 450 years on average,” according to the administrator of Solo CKPool (the BTC mining software used).
Full story
Long ago every book was printed manual.
Then, in the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press; and with that, a slew of publishing houses began to pop up.
Now we are not saying that Bitcoin mining rigs are as revolutionary as the printing press – blockchain technology be able to but that’s a discussion for another day.
The point we are making here is that something similar happened with BTC mining.
It started as individuals setting up their own personal mining rigs in their basements and mining BTC (i.e. using computers to solve complex equations and being rewarded with BTC for doing so).
As BTC became more and more popular, companies started popping up with the sole purpose of mining BTC.
Today, BTC mining companies looks like huge server factories.
It works – BTC mining companies account for 99.97% of all BTC mining as of 2014.
However, one lucky ‘solo miner’ just had one $160k+ payday.
Just like you can print books by hand today, you can my BTC as a solo operator… you just have to be insanely lucky to be the one who finally solves the block equation.
How happy? “A miner of this size would only solve a block [roughly] once every 450 years on average,” according to the administrator of Solo CKPool (the BTC mining software used).
So while it’s not recommended to go out and set up your own mining rig, for those who do, you might just hit the jackpot.