🎓 Explain Like I'm 10
Bitcoin mining is a giant lottery. Every ~10 minutes, one miner wins 15.2788 Bitcoin — worth $1,032,540 today.
On Nov 7, 2017, this miner using a Large mining farm found block #493,496. They were mining alone — no big pool, just their own machines competing directly against the entire Bitcoin network (1020.75 EH/s total).
Winning solo means keeping 100% of the reward — no pool fees, no sharing. High risk, high reward.
🎲 The Odds — Show Your Work
Miner's share of total Bitcoin hashrate
0.000300%
Miner: 3.1 PH/s vs Network: 1020.75 EH/s
Miner hashrate (Estimated from block frequency (4 blocks found))
3.1 PH/s
Bitcoin network hashrate
1020.75 EH/s
Chance of winning each block
1 in 333,351
Expected wait time at this hashrate
6.3 years
Expected blocks to find 1 solo block
333,351 blocks
Probability per block = miner_hashrate / network_hashrate
= 3.1 PH/s / 1020.75 EH/s
= 1 in 333,351
Expected wait = blocks_to_win × 10 minutes
= 333,351 × 10 min = 6.3 years
⛏️ Miner Profile
Hashrate (24h)
3.1 PH/s (est. from 4 blocks)
Estimated from block frequency (4 blocks found)
Solo blocks found (tracked)
4 blocks
🏗️
Large mining farm
Thousands of ASICs, industrial power
🎯 The Winning Number — Nonce Visualizer
To mine a block, the miner cycles through numbers from 0 to 4,294,967,295 at billions per second, checking if each produces a valid hash. Number 3,795,118,365 was the winner.
03,795,118,365 ← winner4,294,967,295
3,795,118,365
Winning Nonce
499,848,930
Numbers after
💡 The miner also tried different extra nonce values — restarting from 0 each time the full 4.29B range was exhausted. Modern ASICs can cycle through the entire nonce space in ~0ms.
💸 Fee Breakdown — What the Miner Captured
The block reward has two parts: a fixed subsidy set by Bitcoin protocol, plus transaction fees paid by users who wanted their transactions included.
Subsidy — 12.5000 BTC (81.81%)
Fixed reward, halves every 4 years
Fees — 2.778785 BTC (18.19%)
From 2,599 transactions in this block
⚡ Solo miners keep 100% of fees — no pool takes a cut. In pool mining, the fee revenue is also split among all pool members.
🏆 Miner Block History — 4 Blocks Found
$3,841,321
Total USD value
55 days
Avg between finds
#493,496THIS BLOCK
Nov 7, 2017 · 17:09 UTC · CKPool Solo
15.2788 BTC ≈ $1,032,540
Dec 14, 2017 · 11:14 UTC · CKPool Solo
16.3922 BTC ≈ $1,107,788
⏱ 37 days since previous find
Mar 17, 2018 · 18:22 UTC · CKPool Solo
12.6638 BTC ≈ $855,821
⏱ 93 days since previous find
Apr 21, 2018 · 21:00 UTC · CKPool Solo
12.5062 BTC ≈ $845,172
⏱ 35 days since previous find
📊 At 3.1 PH/s hashrate, statistically expected to find a block every 6 years. Actual average: 55 days. 🍀 Running hot!