A solo Bitcoin miner secured more than $200,000 after validating an entire Bitcoin block using roughly $75 of rented hashrate, highlighting a rare win for an individual operator.
The miner earned the 3.125 Bitcoin block reward, valued at about $200,000 at current prices, after successfully mining block 938092 at around 8:04 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, according to blockchain data and a post from mining firm Braiins.
Braiins said the miner spent about 119,000 satoshis, equivalent to roughly $75 at the time, to rent 1 petahash per second of computing power through CKPool while paying a small solo-mining fee.
The block was validated using on-demand hashrate, a cloud-based model that allows participants to rent computing power without owning hardware, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for prospective miners.
Although solo block discoveries remain statistically rare, 21 individual miners have validated blocks over the past year, collectively earning 66 BTC worth about $4.1 million, representing a 17% increase in solo blocks found, according to data from aggregator Bennet.
Bitcoin’s mining difficulty recently climbed 15% to 144.4 trillion following the latest network adjustment, reversing an 11% drop triggered by severe US winter storms earlier this month that marked the sharpest hashrate decline since China’s 2021 mining ban.
The Bitcoin network adjusts its mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks, or roughly every two weeks, to maintain an average 10-minute block time as total hashrate, which measures the network’s combined computing power, fluctuates.
At the time of reporting, Bitcoin price was $64,033.86.