Apollo miner completes first Bitcoin block using home setup
Apollo miner completes first Bitcoin block using home setup
On October 29, an unknown solo miner mined a Bitcoin block for the first time using a small home Apollo miner. In doing so, they not only earned more than 3 BTC but also demonstrated that Bitcoin mining is possible outside of mining pools.
This was reported by John Stefanopoulos, the founder of FutureBit, a manufacturer of mining equipment, on the social platform X.
"3.161 BTC. These are bitcoins that did not end up in a pool’s wallet, a Wall Street miner, or an ETF today. One of the 144 blocks mined today went to a private individual who used their own equipment. No intermediaries," he wrote.
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According to him, the block was mined using one of the Apollo models, released in 2020, featuring a 6-core ARM processor clocked at 1.6 GHz, with 4 GB of RAM and a 1 TB SSD. This corresponds to the Apollo BTC model, which could be purchased for $375 on the official website with a discount.
Stefanopoulos highlighted that many startups focused on home mining have recently found solo blocks. He emphasized this trend as a significant step toward restoring Bitcoin’s decentralization.
The challenges of solo mining
An individual miner has minimal chances of finding a block since they compete against large mining pools composed of numerous powerful ASIC miners. Additionally, the network’s total hash rate, or the computational power of all participants, has significantly increased over recent years, making it even harder for solo miners to mine a block. Consequently, most individual miners join pools to share block rewards, thus increasing their chances of stable income.
Meanwhile, Marathon Digital Holdings and other major players in the crypto industry are driving significant Bitcoin production growth in 2024, with North American companies setting new records in production volumes and expansion.
Read also: Bitcoin Halving Cuts BTC Mining Rewards, Miners Stare at Plunging Inflows
