Odds one in a million have been beaten twice this week, with two different small miners have been able to mine a Bitcoin block and each gain 6.25 BTC worth $270,000 at the time of writing. While some credit a stroke of luck, others are worried about a potential hacker attack happening.
On Monday, a BTC block was solved by a small miner with a mining power of just 126 terahashes per second (TH/s).
Not even two whole days later, another lucky miner managed to confirm another block with even less hashing power, only 116 TH/s.
According to Hass McCook, a Bitcoin Mining Council member, the chances of such coincidences are 1 in 1,4 million. “This is insane luck at work, and a very unusual event,” he says, while adding that “insane luck” might be an understatement.
For this reason, some of the community members are cautious to believe in such coincidence and are starting to speculate about a possible attack in the works.
Dr. Con Kolivas, a cryptocurrency mining software CGMiner developer took to his Twitter to comment on the situation: “If enough solo miners do it for long enough, then statistically someone is going to find a block. This time, the person was insanely lucky to find one so soon, but it’s all within expectations of normal variance.”
While the odds are astronomically small, such coincidence is not entirely impossible. We might be witness to what seems equivalent to winning a crypto lottery.