Bitcoin rose back above $98,000 after dipping slightly when US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on aluminum and steel as part of an escalating US trade war.
A solo Bitcoin miner hit the jackpot, mining a block for a 3.125 Bitcoin reward worth over $300,000.
Block 883,181, mined on Feb. 10 by a miner listed as unknown, contained 3,071 transactions and a total reward of 3.15 Bitcoin , according to Bitcoin block explorer Mempool.space.
Bitcoin miner Marshall Long said in a Feb. 10 X post that the miner was using an implementation of the CKPOOL but said they didn’t “seem to be from CKPOOL directly.” He speculated the lucky miner might have used a Bitaxe.
A Bitaxe is a mining device that can be used for solo mining or mining pools where miners combine their computational power to increase the chances of solving the block.
The Bitcoin hashrate is currently at 788.86M, down -0.81% from 795.29M on Feb. 9, but up over 53% from one year ago, data from Bitcoin transaction tracker YCharts shows.
A higher hashrate requires miners to use more computing power, increases energy costs and increases verification and transaction times, making it challenging for solo miners to validate a block successfully.
Related: Bitcoin mining hashrate set to slow down — Here’s why
Solo miners rarely solve blocks. Large mining firms such as Bit Digital, Riot Blockchain and Marathon Digital generally validate the most blocks as they each command massive amounts of hash power.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper says there is a hard limit of only 21 million Bitcoin available. According to the Blockchain Council, more than 19 million have been awarded to miners in block rewards to date.
It comes as the crypto markets continue to recover after a temporary dip when US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on aluminum and steel in the latest salvo of an escalating US trade war.
Bitcoin has crossed back over $98,000 and is up 1.22% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.
Still, it has yet to reach its previous all-time high. The Bitcoin price briefly surged above $109,000 on Jan. 20, ahead of Trump’s inauguration as US president.
