A hobbyist miner using a low-cost Bitaxe device unexpectedly solved Bitcoin block 957,382 and claimed a reward of 3.1382 BTC valued at roughly $200,000.
The miner operated the credit-card-sized rig for eight hours through the Public Pool service at an average hash rate of 995 GH/s. The open-source Bitaxe uses the same BM1370 chip found in industrial Antminer S21 machines and draws 15 to 21 watts while delivering 1 to 1.3 TH/s.
This marks the second time a single Bitaxe has solo-mined a full block on Public Pool. Solo miners have found 24 blocks over the past 12 months, a 41 percent increase from the prior year, for total payouts of 75.44 BTC.
Other recent solo successes include a June 29 find of 3.16 BTC on Solo CKPool and a May 31 block mined with 14 Canaan Nano devices. Bitcoin mining difficulty fell 5 percent to 127.17 trillion on July 12.
