Another solo Bitcoin miner defied the odds last week, processing a block and bagging a 3.125 BTC reward. At the time—including the transaction fees—that was a $259,637 payday. And it was one of several such solo scores in recent months.

Was the miner lucky? Is solo mining becoming more common? And can an average Joe hook up a hobby mining machine and succeed with minimal resources compared to publicly traded miners?

The answers vary. Solo miners, a term used to describe everything from individual hobby miners to groups that prefer to operate privately and discreetly, are succeeding more often, although not dramatically so—and the totals are unlikely to spike significantly.

Mining without the support of a big pool is “still like playing the lottery,” said Scott Norris, CEO of independent Bitcoin miner Optiminer.

In 2022, solo miners using the Solo CKPool—a service allowing anonymous miners to get started with a mining hook-up, without the need to run their own full Bitcoin node—solved seven blocks. In 2023, the number jumped to 12 blocks. Fast forward to 2024, and the number hit 16 blocks. 

But a block mined using Solo CKPool (which is not a traditional mining pool, despite the name) does not necessarily mean someone is mining Bitcoin with very little hash rate, alone in their bedroom. Some Crypto Twitter observers have loudly, but erroneously made this claim. 

The mining pool industry is dominated by a handful of big players—think Foundry, AntPool, and F2Pool. Miners hook up to the pool, share resources, and split rewards. With a service like Solo CKPool, the miner will get the reward once they find a block—and keep nearly all of it.

As the Bitcoin network has grown, more power and resources are needed to mine blocks, and mining businesses often are industrial operations run by public companies. Some hardcore Bitcoiners argue that this is bad for Bitcoin, because the network should be as decentralized as possible. 

Hobby mining rigs like Bitaxe and FutureBit Apollo, which sell from $200 to $500, are now the favorite gadgets of “Bitcoin maximalists.” In January, a FutureBit Apollo processed a block—but only thanks to a nonprofit group donating hash rate (the computational power committed to supporting the Bitcoin network) to the machine from other machines. 

The idea was to “dismantle the proprietary mining empire to make Bitcoin and freedom tech accessible to anyone,” pseudonymous Bitcoin miner Econoalchemist wrote on X at the time.

Even with slim odds, the rise of hobby miners could be fueling the apparent growth of individual block wins in recent months. In an interview with Decrypt, Econoalchemist noted the recent trend of growing solo successes. 

“Every once in a while, and more and more frequently, that single machine [processing a block] is a Bitaxe or similar small mining device found running quietly in someone’s home,” he said.

Optimer’s Scott Norris noted that conglomerates could be processing blocks by not using a big pool, but by having a lot of hashrate.

And even Houston, Texas-based Solo Satoshi, which sells mining equipment like the Bitaxe Gamma, says on its website that using a $180 Bitaxe machine with a hashrate of 1.2 terahash per second would have a 0.00068390% chance per day of mining a block. 

But Matt Howard, who founded Solo Satoshi, said that getting stuck into solo mining isn’t necessarily about the payday.

“The primary goal is more decentralization. Finding a block and getting the Bitcoin reward is a bonus,” he said. “To the Bitcoin maximalists, they understand that mining needs to be decentralized.”

Edited by James Rubin

Today marks what crypto enthusiasts celebrate as Satoshi Nakamoto‘s 50th birthday, according to the birth date the mysterious Bitcoin creator registered on his profile for the P2P Foundation—a nonprofit organization dedicated to researching and advocating for the adoption of P2P solutions.

Based on his profile, Satoshi was born on April 5, 1975. That is, of course, as unverified as most of the lore surrounding the Satoshi saga—and the date carries symbolic weight that crypto historians find too perfect to be coincidental.

On April 5, 1933—a day that will live in infamy among monetary freedom advocates–U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102, which required all Americans to turn in their gold coins, bullion, and certificates to the Federal Reserve.

This was part of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies to combat the Great Depression and aimed to remove gold from circulation. Worse, many forms of gold were subsequently made illegal for Americans to own the following year as part of the Gold Reserve Act.

That lasted until December 31, 1974, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation to restore the right to private gold ownership. So we’ll call it 1975. Get it? April 5, 1975.

The April 5 date aligns with the anniversary of that original order, suggesting Nakamoto deliberately chose a birth date that symbolized monetary freedom.

Before vanishing, person or people behind Nakamoto created Bitcoin by solving the so-called double-spending problem that had plagued previous digital currency attempts. He released the Bitcoin white paper on October 31, 2008, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” which laid the groundwork for blockchain technology and the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Bitcoin wallets associated with Nakamoto still hold approximately between 600,000 to 1 million BTC, worth billions. These coins have remained untouched since his disappearance, adding to the legend of the creator who walked away from potential fortune and fame.

The Bitcoin community continues to honor Nakamoto’s birthday each year, regardless of whether April 5, 1975, represents a real birth date or merely a clever nod to monetary history. The celebration has become part of Bitcoin culture and a reminder of the pseudonymous founder’s lasting impact on finance and technology.

The Babylon Foundation, an entity tied to the Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon, released tokenomic details for its BABY token Thursday—and revealed an airdrop for early users.

The Foundation will provide 6% or 600 million BABY, the Babylon Genesis Network’s native governance token, to five reward groups and early supporters as part of its airdrop. The vast majority of tokens (585 million) set aside for the airdrop campaign will be provided to those who have staked Bitcoin with Babylon. 

“Tokens will be directly transferred to the registered BABY address upon Babylon Genesis launch,” the Babylon Foundation posted on X (formerly Twitter). “No claims needed.”

The largest allocation, 335 million BABY tokens, is for those who participated in Babylon’s Base Phase-1 staking, the locking up of native Bitcoin tokens via Babylon which took place across multiple instances called “caps.” 

The protocol launched three total caps of Bitcoin staking, the first of which was held to just 1,000 Bitcoin and led to a major spike in transaction fees as users rushed to be among the first to stake their Bitcoin ahead of anticipated rewards.

Another 200 million BABY is earmarked for users that transition their Phase-1 stakes to Phase-2. Two smaller buckets—of 30 million and 5 million BABY, respectively—will be provided to Pioneer Pass NFT holders and Github contributors.

BABY was first revealed in February, and users were able to create and register a BABY address and connect it to their Bitcoin staking wallet. At the launch of the Babylon Genesis Network, users will automatically receive their airdropped BABY tokens. 

Users who have participated in Babylon staking, but have not registered their address, can still do so if they transition their stakes to Phase-2. Other social and wallet campaign airdrops for BABY are also planned by the Foundation.

Babylon Genesis is a layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain that is secured by Bitcoin, meaning it uses Bitcoin staking to secure and provide liquidity to the network. The network will utilize a “dual-staking” model, allowing users to stake both BTC and BABY tokens. 

Babylon previously raised more than $70 million to make Bitcoin the “backbone of proof-of-stake systems”—in other words, making it possible to use the leading crypto asset to help secure proof-of-stake chains like Ethereum or Solana.

Edited by Andrew Hayward