A lone Bitcoin miner achieved a rare feat by validating a full block and securing a hefty reward, all with a hobbyist setup and on-demand hashing power. The miner earned the 3.125 BTC block reward, which was worth roughly $200,000 at the time, by successfully mining Bitcoin block 938092, per data from blockchain trackers and a report from Braiins, a Bitcoin mining company.
Braiins explained that the miner used on-demand hashrate, spending about 119,000 satoshis (around $75) to rent 1 petahash per second of computing power and paying a small solo-mining fee as part of the process. The operation leveraged CKPool, a service enabling individual miners to work independently while still broadcasting work and submitting solutions through a pool server.
Although solo-mining a full block is uncommon, a modest investment in on-demand hashrate can occasionally yield a substantial payout. On-demand hashrate refers to cloud-based mining where enthusiasts rent computing power to mine cryptocurrencies without owning hardware.
The block was mined by the solo miner at approximately 8:04 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, according to Mempool.space blockchain data.
Related: Lone Bitcoin miner wins block using tiny, cheap rig — ‘1 in a million chance’
Solo-wins remain statistically rare
Mining a full block solo is an infrequent occurrence, but 21 miners have achieved it in the past year, collectively earning 66 BTC (about $4.1 million at current prices). This represents a 17% rise in solo-block discoveries over the prior year, according to data compiled by a solo-miner tracker, Bennet.
Current data indicate that a solo block is found on average every 17.2 days.
Bitcoin mining faces changes in the wake of winter storms in the United States
The network’s mining difficulty rose to 144.4 trillion after the latest adjustment, a 15% increase. This uptick came after an 11% drop caused by severe US winter storms earlier in the month, marking the largest hash-rate retreat since China’s 2021 crackdown.
Hashrate represents the total computing power backing the Bitcoin network. The mining difficulty adjusts every 2,016 blocks (roughly every two weeks) to align block production with the 10-minute target.
