Simply put
- A Bitcoin miner rented hashing power worth $75, discovered a block, and gained a reward of $200,000 in BTC.
- Given the current conditions in Bitcoin mining, such a win might happen only once every 21 years.
- Experts often compare Bitcoin mining to “playing the lottery.”
A miner who borrowed $75 of mining power managed to beat the odds and acquired over 3.1 BTC, which is roughly $200,000, early Tuesday.
This individual rented at least 1 petahash per second (PH) of hashing power through the Brainins marketplace, which allows people to lease Bitcoin mining capacity from companies without needing to set up or maintain physical equipment.
💥Breaking news
Miners found 3.125 BTC blocks using on-demand hashrate.
• 1 PH/s rental
• Spent 119,000 satellites (approximately $75)
• Block 938092
• Worker: Spiral
• Hashpower fee: 0
• Solo fee: 0.5% (CKPool open source contribution)Congratulations! Try Hashpower now. Link in profile 🍀
— Brains (@Brains) February 24, 2026
Solo mining victories are quite rare, primarily because most Bitcoin blocks are earned by large mining pools with significant computing power dedicated to solving the cryptographic puzzles that secure Bitcoin’s network.
Experts liken this approach to playing the lottery. Interestingly, there have been several winners recently. In January, two solo miners each collected over 3.1 BTC, valued around $300,000 at that time. Another miner in December managed to earn over $282,000 in rewards based on the prevailing BTC price.
This achievement seems even more remarkable considering the rise in hash rate, which now averages over 1.1 Zhash/s daily. Last year, the network’s total computing power was about 730 Ehash/s, only 61% of its current level, according to Bitinfo data.
The increase in power might be linked to miners from regions like China. It appears that North American mining pool participation is decreasing, partially due to shifts toward AI computing demands, moving miners’ focus from Bitcoin.
For instance, publicly traded Bitcoin miners like Bitfarms have significantly reduced their mining operations, while others, like Riot Platform, are responding to investors interested in capitalizing on AI opportunities.
A representative from Brains has not yet commented on this situation.
