Solo miner wins 3.14 bitcoins worth $200,000 with a $150 device

You don’t often hear such news in the crypto mining world. Yet, when they arise, a breath of hope sweeps through the entire community. A bitcoin miner just hit the jackpot with a low-end machine. A story that defies all statistics and questions the very nature of chance.

874 EH/s vs 1 TH/s : the Bitaxe takes on bitcoin’s giants

Again the same story with a low-price device? On July 9, 2026, at 03:30 UTC, a small box about the size of a palm beat the mining giants. A solo miner using a Bitaxe Gamma mined block #957382 via Public Pool, claiming 3.1382 BTC, approximately 200,000 dollars.

The device, sold between 60 and 150 dollars, had been running for eight hours with a hashrate of 995.2 GH/s.

Meanwhile, the bitcoin network was deploying 874 exahash per second. The comparison to an ant facing a herd of elephants is no exaggeration. The Bitaxe is powered by the BM1370 chip, consumes 15 to 21 watts, and plugs into a household outlet. 

This toy for enthusiasts, designed for learning, just proved that mining lottery remains accessible to all. How could such a modest device beat industrial machines? The answer lies in the very essence of the bitcoin protocol: every hash has an equal chance to solve the block. 

The mining difficulty does not affect the individual probability of each attempt.

Solo mining explodes : 24 bitcoin blocks in one year, a dream for small crypto miners

Since the beginning of 2026, solo crypto miners have found 12 bitcoin blocks. Over the last twelve months, the total reached 24 blocks, up 41% compared to the previous year. Total rewards amount to 75.44 BTC, with an average interval of 15.2 days between each discovery. 

This success is not a matter of chance: mining difficulty dropped by 5% on July 12, falling to 127.17 T.

At the same time, Public Pool, which charges 0% fees in solo setup, is becoming a preferred choice for enthusiasts. 

Meanwhile, mining giants like Bitdeer and MARA Holdings are turning to AI, freeing up symbolic space for smaller players. This economic paradox raises questions: why are the big players abandoning the ship when small ones find their place? The answer lies in electricity costs and profitability.

Small BTC miners, with their low energy expenses, can still pull through in this challenging environment.

Never let anyone tell you that you can’t mine a block !

The Bitaxe story spread like wildfire on the X platform. Under the hashtags #Bitaxe and #SoloMining, the crypto community celebrates this feat with contagious enthusiasm. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t mine a block!!!” proclaims a post that went viral.

However, this success also fuels a sometimes misleading fantasy. Most solo crypto miners mine for years without ever finding anything. Sites tracking solo successes, like Soloblocks.io, log a handful of wins among thousands of participants. 

The Bitaxe faced odds of 1 in 874 million, a staggering figure. A miner with 70 TH/s on CKpool, meanwhile, has odds of 1 in 100,000 per day. The gap between these probabilities remains abyssal and reminds us that exceptions do not make the rule.

Key figures of the jackpot:

• Total reward: 3.1382 BTC (200,000 dollars);
• Device hashrate: 995.2 GH/s;
• Network hashrate: 874 EH/s;
• BTC price at the time of writing: 62,996 dollars.

Bitcoin mining has long generated losses for small miners, faced with increasing difficulty. Yet, a new wind now blows across the sector. Mining difficulty has just declined, offering welcome relief for those who persevere.