Solo mining: two home miners each win a Bitcoin block within 24 hours ($250,000 each)

In 2026, mining Bitcoin is mostly a business of huge industrial farms: warehouses full of thousands of machines. So most small miners join a pool A server that machines connect to. A regular pool shares the earnings, a solo pool does not. Solo or pool?, a cooperative: they add up their hashrate Computing power: the number of attempts per second of a machine or of the whole network. The higher it is, the more tickets you play in each draw. and share An attempt good enough to be counted by the pool. It proves your machine is working, even if it is not enough to find a block. every reward, which gives a steady but tiny income.

Solo mining is the opposite: you mine for yourself alone. If your machine finds the right number, you keep the whole block reward. If it does not, you get nothing. It is literally a lottery, with a draw every 10 minutes on average. Everything is explained in the solo mining guide, and how it compares with a regular pool in Solo or pool?

On Monday 26 October 2026 at 17:06 UTC, block 973,262 was confirmed. mempool.space credits it to “FutureBit Apollo Solo”, and the transaction that pays the reward carries the message “FutureBit-Solo Apollo Run by Wilson”: that is where the nickname “Wilson” comes from.

The exact machine is not known. According to Bitcoin Magazine, FutureBit says the block was prepared, served and submitted to the network by the solo pool built into its machines: an Apollo (BTC, II or III) or a Solo Node A computer that keeps a full copy of Bitcoin and checks every block itself. Run your own node, quiet boxes that also run a full Bitcoin node. The Apollo III is rated up to 18 TH/s in turbo mode. It is the fourth block found this way, after blocks 867,760 (October 2024), 881,423 (January 2025) and 888,737 (March 2025).

FutureBit celebrated on X: “Gradually, then suddenly. We (the people) hit a Bitcoin block today.” A block found by people, not by an industrial farm.

Short The whole story in one minute Play the video: Il mine du Bitcoin depuis son bureau… et gagne 255 000 $

On Tuesday 27 October at 15:11 UTC, 22 hours after the first one, block 973,413 landed on Solo CKPool, the oldest solo pool. The reward transaction shows it: 98% to the miner, 2% to the pool.

The 16.2 TH/s figure comes from Bitcoin.com News: the blockchain shows who was paid, not how much hashrate they had. That is a handful of small home miners. With that hashrate and that day’s difficulty How many attempts it takes on average to find a block. It adjusts itself about every two weeks. Difficulty explained, finding a block takes close to 1,200 years on average. This miner did it on a Tuesday afternoon.

Two solo blocks less than a day apart is a rare double: over the past year, solo pools found only about two blocks a month.

Over the last twelve months, the main solo pools identified by mempool.space (Solo CK, Public Pool, Braiins Solo, SoloPool.com, Noderunners) found 24 blocks out of 52,365, about 1 block in 2,200 (as of 31 October 2026), not counting a few blocks like FutureBit’s. The list, updated every day, is on solo blocks found.

The Bitcoin network produces a block every 10 minutes on average, and every time, all the machines in the world compete for the same ticket. At the end of October 2026 the network ran at around 1,100 EH/s: about 70 million times the CKPool miner’s hashrate. Against industrial farms, a home miner’s chance is tiny, but not zero, and every draw starts from scratch: a machine builds up nothing and can win on its very first night. Where these numbers come from: mining difficulty explained.

A small solo miner, such as a Bitaxe, a NerdQAxe or a FutureBit Apollo:

1. heats your room: the electricity it uses is not lost, it becomes heat;
2. secures the Bitcoin network: every independent machine adds to decentralisation;
3. gives you a ticket for every block, every 10 minutes, for a prize of about $250,000.

To be honest: with a Bitaxe Gamma, it is about a 1 in 16,800 chance a year (network as of 30 October 2026), and most small machines will never find a block. You mine for the heat, for the network, and for the ticket. The solo mining calculator gives the odds of your own machine, and Which Bitaxe to buy? helps you get started. For the pool, Best solo mining pool compares the options, including mine, FindMyBlock, with no fee.

Your heater could earn you bitcoin: I explain everything in the full video (in French), and in writing in Heat your home mining Bitcoin.

Before sending everything to an exchange, watch out for the traps: the reward stays locked for 100 blocks (about 16 hours), it lands on the address you gave the pool, an exchange will run KYC and anti-money-laundering checks on such a sum, and the tax office sees it as income. It is all covered in my video on finding a block (in French) and in the guide Found a block solo: what next?