A guy rented computing power for $75 and received 3.125 BTC (about $200,000). It sounds like a joke, but it actually happened on block 938,092. A solo miner connected through CKPool with 1 petahash of rented capacity and guessed the cryptographic puzzle before any industrial farms. A profit 2,600 times the stake — that's not just luck, it's a lottery with transparent odds.

Such a thing was almost impossible before: you needed your own expensive farm. Now cloud services allow anyone to rent power regulators for just a few dollars and try their luck. Over the past year, 21 solo miners successfully validated blocks and earned a total of 66 BTC — 17% more than a year ago. On average, a block is found every 17 days.

The current network difficulty has risen to 144.4 trillion after the latest adjustment (a 15% increase), but winter storms in the US earlier this month temporarily reduced the overall hash rate, making the search easier. That’s the window the lucky one caught. BTC is now trading around $73.6k, continuing the fight for a stable breakthrough above key levels. It seems individual mining is becoming an increasingly accessible activity.