A notable event has emerged in the realm of Bitcoin mining, capturing the attention of enthusiasts and analysts alike. An independent miner has achieved the remarkable feat of validating a complete Bitcoin block, thus securing the entirety of the block subsidy amounting to 3.125 BTC. This achievement came at a surprisingly low cost, as the miner spent only about $75 on rented computing power.
This milestone was confirmed by mining firm Braiins through social media channels, with the details corroborated by on-chain data. The miner successfully mined Bitcoin block 938092, earning a subsidy valued at approximately $200,000 based on current market valuations. The mining process involved renting around 1 petahash per second (PH/s) of hashpower from an on-demand service, with the total rental cost reported to be around 119,000 satoshis.
The operation was facilitated through CKPool, a platform designed for solo miners to broadcast their block solutions and retain the full rewards if successful. This achievement illustrates a dynamic shift in how Bitcoin mining can be approached, as it did not necessitate ownership of extensive hardware but instead leveraged temporary, rented hashrate. This model opens the door for hobbyists and smaller operators to participate in Bitcoin mining without requiring significant upfront investments.
The use of on-demand hashrate functions similarly to a cloud-based mining service, allowing individuals to rent SHA-256 computational power for defined periods and direct it toward either a mining pool or a specific network target. Such success stories are exceptionally rare in the current landscape of Bitcoin mining, where solo block rewards have become increasingly difficult to achieve. The network’s total computing power and mining difficulty have escalated, leading to an environment where large mining pools typically dominate block production. These pools aggregate the hashpower of numerous miners, greatly enhancing their odds of successfully finding blocks.
Consequently, the chances for individual miners, particularly those reliant on modest or rented hashpower, to solve a block independently are marginal. Data analytics from the aggregator Bennet indicates that only 21 solo miners have managed to discover blocks in the past year, contributing to a total of approximately 66 BTC — equivalent to around $4.1 million at current market rates. This translates to an average of one solo block discovery roughly every 17.2 days, a stark contrast to the thousands of blocks produced daily across the broader Bitcoin network.
Despite the infrequent nature of these solo successes, they remain significant outliers, akin to winning a lottery in traditional finance rather than signaling a sweeping transformation in mining strategy. This particular milestone occurred against a backdrop of fluctuating mining difficulty, which has seen notable volatility recently. Following substantial downward pressure from winter storms that temporarily disrupted hashrate in critical mining regions, Bitcoin’s difficulty rebounded sharply by about 15%, rising to 144.4 trillion in the latest adjustment cycle. This rebound came on the heels of an earlier 11% drop due to weather-related outages, marking the most significant decline in network hashpower since the crackdown on mining in China in 2021.
These difficulty adjustments happen roughly every 2,016 blocks—equivalent to around two weeks—and are vital in maintaining the network’s average block time at approximately 10 minutes, while also calibrating the computational resources necessary to find new blocks. Large fluctuations in the network’s hashpower, whether caused by weather-related disruptions, miner shutdowns, or equipment changes, can temporarily create scenarios where lower-cost, rented hashpower has better odds than normal. This unique intersection of factors may have contributed to the independent miner’s success, emphasizing the ever-evolving nature of Bitcoin mining and the possibilities it can offer.
