There’s been buzz about someone who, with only a $75 rental capacity, managed to grab Bitcoin worth over 2 million yen. Recently, a solo miner verified block 938,092 and claimed a reward of 3.125 BTC. At current prices, that’s roughly 2.3 million yen.

What’s impressive about this miner is that they only invested about 119,000 satoshis (around $75 at the time) through the CKPool service to rent a calculation power of 1 petahash per second. In other words, they achieved more than 2,600 times the return with a probability similar to winning the lottery.

When you hear about Bitcoin mining, you usually imagine large-scale industrial facilities, right? But lately, cloud services have made it possible to rent hash rate capabilities for just a few dollars, drastically lowering the barrier to entry. It’s like trying to shoot in a gunfight with a slingshot—highly unlikely, but someone always wins each time.

In fact, over the past year, 21 individual miners have successfully mined solo blocks, totaling 66 BTC (about $4.1 million at current rates). That’s a 17% increase year-over-year. On average, an individual miner wins a block roughly every 17 days.

By the way, the current network difficulty has skyrocketed to 144.4 trillion, a rebound after a temporary dip caused by last month’s winter storm. During that dip, the miner with the right timing and that $75 investment managed to seize the opportunity.

Bitcoin’s price is currently around $74,220, having once tested $76,000 but then pulling back, trading sideways for nearly two months. On a certain large exchange’s perpetual market, the funding rate has been negative for 46 days, indicating persistent bearish positions. Such long-term risk-off phases often precede sharp rallies, so it’s worth keeping an eye on this.