In brief
- A Bitcoin miner rented $75 worth of hash power and earned a $200,000 BTC reward by finding a block.
- Based on current Bitcoin mining dynamics, such an event is likely to happen only once every 21 years.
- Participating in solo Bitcoin mining has been likened by experts to “playing the lottery.”
A Bitcoin miner that rented $75 of mining power defied the odds by finding a solo block reward, earning more than 3.1 BTC worth around $200,000 early Tuesday.
The individual rented the minimum 1 Petahash/s (PH) of hash power via Braiins hash power marketplace, which allows users to rent Bitcoin mining capacity directly from the company without needing to install or operate any physical hardware themselves.
Based on the current hash rate of the Bitcoin network, at that mining capacity, a success would only occur approximately every 1 out of 1.1 million blocks, or about 21 years’ worth of mining, according to estimates from SoloChance.com.
Solo mining wins are rare, as most Bitcoin blocks are found and awarded to large mining pools that have dedicated massive amounts of computational power to solving cryptographic puzzles, which underpin Bitcoin’s public ledger and network.
But the act, likened by experts to “playing the lottery,” has provided a handful of jackpot winners of late. In January, two solo Bitcoin miners pulled in more than 3.1 BTC in respective rewards worth around $300,000 at the time. In December, another miner beat the odds, scoring a reward of more than $282,000 based on BTC’s price at that time.
The feats are even more impressive when you consider the growing hashrate, or the total computational power of the network, which is above 1.1 Zhash/s on average per day according to data from Bitinfo. At this time last year, the network’s overall computational power was around 730 Ehash/s—about 61% of its current capacity.
That growing share may be coming from miners in China or elsewhere, as North American mining pools saw a declining share of computation power in 2025. A portion of that decline can be attributed to pools and miners that had previously been focused on mining BTC shifting their attention to growing demand for AI compute.
For example, publicly traded Bitcoin miners like Bitfarms are completely winding down their mining operations, while others like Riot Platforms are being urged by investors to capitalize on opportunities in AI.
A representative for Braiins did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
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