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$75 turns into $200,000 jackpot for lucky BTC miner

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Miners get an open-source alternative as Tether launches MiningOS

Talk about winning the lottery. A solo miner walked away with over $200,000 in bitcoin while renting just $75 of hash power.

A solo miner validated block 938,092 around 8:04 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, earning the full 3.125 BTC block reward using hashrate rented through on-demand cloud services, according to blockchain data from Mempool.space.

The miner spent roughly 119,000 satoshis, about $75, to rent 1 petahash per second of computing power and used CKPool, a service that lets individual miners work independently while relying on a pool server to broadcast and submit solutions.

The math on that return is absurd. It’s a 2,600x payoff on what amounts to a lottery ticket with better odds than most actual lotteries.

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Bitcoin’s network processes transactions by bundling them into blocks, which are added to the blockchain roughly every 10 minutes. Miners compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle for the right to add each block, and the winner collects the reward.

The competition is measured in hashrate, the amount of computing power a miner throws at the puzzle. More hashrate means more guesses per second and better odds.

Statistically rare

A solo miner renting 1 petahash is like bringing a slingshot to a gunfight. The odds of that single petahash solving a block before the industrial operations do are vanishingly small, roughly equivalent to finding one specific grain of sand on a beach.

But someone has to win each block, and probability doesn’t care about scale. As such, while solo-mined blocks remain statistically rare, they’re not as rare as they used to be.

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Data from solo mining aggregator Bennet shows 21 individual miners have successfully validated blocks over the past year, earning a combined 66 BTC worth $4.1 million at current prices. That’s a 17% increase in solo blocks found year-over-year, with one landing roughly every 17 days on average.

The rise of on-demand hashrate rental has lowered the barrier to entry.

Miners no longer need to own physical hardware to take a shot. Cloud-based services let anyone rent computing power for as little as a few dollars, turning solo mining from an infrastructure-heavy operation into something closer to a scratch-off card with transparent odds.

Meanwhile, the lucky block landed during an interesting moment for bitcoin mining economics.

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Network difficulty just climbed to 144.4 trillion after the latest adjustment, a 15% increase that reversed an 11% drop caused by severe U.S. winter storms earlier this month. The climb means miners now need on the order of 144.4 trillion hash attempts, on average, to find a valid block, compared with the very first blocks in 2009.

That storm-driven decline was the sharpest hashrate drop since China’s 2021 mining ban, temporarily making blocks easier to find before the network recalibrated.

And for one miner with $75 and good timing, the window was enough.

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Crypto World

Cardano (ADA) Soars 10% Daily, Bitcoin (BTC) Recovery Stopped at $70K: Market Watch

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BTCUSD Feb 26. Source: TradingView


DOT, STABLE, and UNI have rocketed the most in the past day, with gains of over 20% in some instances.

After dumping to a new local bottom of $62,500, bitcoin went on a tear yesterday, surging by over eight grand to $70,000, where it faced immediate selling pressure.

Many altcoins have produced even more impressive gains over the past day, with ETH reclaiming the $2,000 level, and ADA surging by double digits to almost $0.30.

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BTC Tapped $70K

After last week’s rejection at $70,000, bitcoin spiraled down for a few consecutive days and dipped to $65,600 last Thursday. It reacted well to this decline and jumped toward $69,000 during the weekend, where it was stopped again after the latest developments on the tariff front, prompted by the US Supreme Court and the subsequent Trump actions.

Although BTC remained relatively still at first, it plunged when the legacy futures markets opened. In just over an hour, the asset plummeted to $64,400 before it rebounded to $66,400.

That appeared to be a dead-cat bounce, and BTC quickly began to lose value again. This time, the nosedive drove it to a three-week lot of $62,500. The bulls finally stepped up decisively at this point and prevented another leg down. Just the opposite; bitcoin exploded out of the gate and soared to $70,000 for the first time in over a week.

It couldn’t break above that level, and has declined by two grand since. However, it’s still 4.5% up on the day, and its market cap has returned to $1.360 trillion on CG. Its dominance over the alts remains inches above 56%.

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BTCUSD Feb 26. Source: TradingView
BTCUSD Feb 26. Source: TradingView

Alts Rocket

Ethereum, which some analysts believe might have already bottomed out, is back above $2,000 after an impressive 8% daily surge. XRP has reclaimed the $1.40 line after a 5.5% pump. SOL, DOGE, CC, BNB, and HYPE have marked similar gains, while LINK has soared by 9%.

ADA has outperformed the rest of the larger-cap alts. A 10% surge has driven it to almost $0.30. DOT is today’s top performer, having soared by 24% to roughly $1.60. STABLE, UNI, and NEAR follow suit.

The total crypto market cap has recovered $120 billion since the recent low and is up to $2.425 trillion on CG.

Cryptocurrency Market Overview Feb 26. Source: QuantifyCrypto
Cryptocurrency Market Overview Feb 26. Source: QuantifyCrypto
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Can XRP Price Recover in March?

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Can XRP Price Recover in March?

A convincing bullish reversal setup and hints of easing whale distribution may push the price of XRP up by 20% or more in March.

XRP (XRP) is down more than 50% since October 2025, with five consecutive monthly losses. Can March finally snap the bearish streak?

Key takeaways:

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  • XRP’s double-bottom setup targets 20% upside in March.

  • Whale selling has cooled and larger-holder balances are rising, improving the bullish outlook.

Double bottom hints at 20% XRP rally

As of Thursday, XRP was forming what appeared to be a double bottom pattern after holding the $1.30–$1.35 support area twice in February.

A double bottom forms when the price hits the same floor twice an rebounds. It resolves on a breakout above the neckline, often setting an upside target equal to the pattern’s height from the breakout level.

XRP/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView

For XRP, the neckline sits near $1.50. A decisive break above it increases the odds of XRP rising to $1.68–$1.70 by March, roughly 20% above the current levels.

XRP whale flows improve recovery chances

XRP net flows are shrinking toward neutral levels after spending months in distribution phase, according to data resource CryptoQuant.

As of Thursday, the total whale flow on a 90-day moving average was around -3.29 million XRP compared to roughly -33.50 million XRP in December. This shows that whale outflows have substantially decreased despite the 25% price drop in the same period.

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XRPL whale flow 90-day moving average vs. price. Source: CryptoQuant

At the same time, XRP supply held by wallets with at least 1,000 tokens has resumed its upward trajectory in recent weeks, suggesting that whales have stopped selling and may be re-accumulating near current lows.

XRP supply held by addresses with at least 1,000 token balance. Source: Glassnode

A similar easing in whale flows occurred in April 2025, which preceded an XRP rebound of over 50%.

Therefore, a clean flip above zero would signal net accumulation and strengthen the case for XRP to follow through toward its $1.68–$1.70 double-bottom target in March.

What could spoil the bullish XRP scenario?

The $1.68–$1.70 area is above XRP’s 50-day exponential moving average (50-day EMA, the red trendline), a level the price has failed to break throughout February.

XRP/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView

A pullback from the 50-day EMA could keep XRP from hitting its double-bottom target. That may further trigger a bear pennant scenario with the price target at around $1, down about 30% from the current price levels.

Related: $209B exited altcoins over the last 13 months: Did traders rotate into Bitcoin?

Macro risks are another headwind. The return of the AI-driven risk-off trade and US–Iran tensions can drain liquidity from high-beta assets, making it harder for XRP to sustain a breakout even if the chart setup currently looks promising.

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