🎓 Explain Like I'm 10
Someone spent a small amount of money to rent mining power from NiceHash for a short time. They pointed it at the Bitcoin network solo, hoping to win the lottery.
On Jan 12, 2024, against enormous odds, they hit the jackpot — block #825,449 worth $444,761. The cost of renting that hashrate? A fraction of the reward.
🎲 The Odds — Show Your Work
Miner's share of total Bitcoin hashrate
0.023932%
Miner: 244.3 PH/s vs Network: 1020.75 EH/s
Miner hashrate (Estimated from block frequency (4 blocks found))
244.3 PH/s
Bitcoin network hashrate
1020.75 EH/s
Chance of winning each block
1 in 4,179
Expected wait time at this hashrate
29 days
Expected blocks to find 1 solo block
4,179 blocks
Probability per block = miner_hashrate / network_hashrate
= 244.3 PH/s / 1020.75 EH/s
= 1 in 4,179
Expected wait = blocks_to_win × 10 minutes
= 4,179 × 10 min = 29 days
⛏️ Miner Profile
Hashrate (24h)
244.3 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 2,663,408,288 was the winner.
02,663,408,288 ← winner4,294,967,295
2,663,408,288
Winning Nonce
1,631,559,007
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 — 6.2500 BTC (94.97%)
Fixed reward, halves every 4 years
Fees — 0.331245 BTC (5.03%)
From 477 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
$1,764,027
Total USD value
21 days
Avg between finds
Jan 11, 2024 · 07:06 UTC · NiceHash EasyMining
6.6030 BTC ≈ $446,228
#825,449THIS BLOCK
Jan 12, 2024 · 11:37 UTC · NiceHash EasyMining
6.5812 BTC ≈ $444,761
⏱ 1 days since previous find
Mar 7, 2024 · 23:52 UTC · NiceHash EasyMining
6.4930 BTC ≈ $438,797
⏱ 56 days since previous find
Mar 13, 2024 · 09:10 UTC · NiceHash EasyMining
6.4256 BTC ≈ $434,241
⏱ 5 days since previous find
📊 At 244.3 PH/s hashrate, statistically expected to find a block every 29 days. Actual average: 21 days. 🍀 Running hot!