Hopium is back on the menu for solo Bitcoin (BTC) miners. A circa $240,000 reward, or 6.25 BTC, was generated by yet another solo miner this morning. This time, the odds were less than 20%, according to Con Kolivas, a Bitcoin software engineer and administrator for ckpool, whose name takes his initials. It’s the fourth “blockfind” for the ckpool since Jan. 11. Kolivas tweeted his congratulations to the miner who joins the ranks of the few and fortunate successful solo BTC miners. Congratulations to a miner with 1.14PH who solved the 264th solo Bitcoin block at https://t.co/UWgBvLkDqc ! https://t.co/5BsWlYkYJt There …

Another Bitcoin miner from the Solo CK mining pool has solo mined a new block on the Bitcoin blockchain, earning a block reward of 6.25 BTC (over $220,000 at current prices) as a result. The event took place on Monday at a block height of 720,175. Solo mining consists of attempting to validate blocks by a single miner, without teaming efforts with other miners on a mining pool, and running a full blockchain node. Without significant hashing capabilities, the odds of validating a block tend to be extremely unlikely. To increase these odds and avoid the costs associated with solo …

The Bitcoin network difficulty is determined by the overall computational power, which co-relates to the difficulty in confirming transactions and mining BTC. As evidenced by the blockchain.com data, the network difficulty saw a downfall between May and July 2021 due to various reasons including a blanket ban on crypto mining from China. The Bitcoin (BTC) network has recorded a new all-time high mining difficulty of 26.643 trillion with an average hash rate of 190.71 exahash per second (EH/s) — signaling strong community support despite an ongoing bear market. However, as the displaced miners resumed operations from other countries, the network …

An individual Ether (ETH) miner struck it big by mining a block on their own and receiving a reward valued at about $540,000. The miner was operating through the 2miners Ethereum SOLO pool on Jan. 17 when they mined an entire block and received 168 ETH. That reward vastly outstrips the per-block average reward of about 4 ETH according to BitInfoCharts. Adding to the remarkable nature of the reward is the size and hash power of the SOLO pool. It is relatively small with 854 miners online and 1.5 Tera hashes per second at time of writing, meaning that the …

In an astonishing turn of events, two lucky miners from the Solo CK mining pool have defied all odds and added a new block on the Bitcoin blockchain in the same week. On Monday, a tiny miner successfully solved a block with a modest hash rate capacity of 126 terahashes per second (TH/s). Bitcoin mining expert and member of the Bitcoin Mining Council Hass McCook told Cointelegraph at the time that the odds of this happening were 1 in 1,400,000. But according to a Jan 13 tweet from Solo admin Con Kolivas, another miner from the same pool was able …

The government of Kosovo has ceased crypto mining in the country owing to power constraints during the winter season. Kosovo's minister of Economy, Artane Rizvanolli, has decided to stop crypto mining following a recommendation from the Technical Committee on "Emergency Measures for Energy Supply," according to a report by local outlet Gazeta Express. The report notes that the government made the decision after Kosovo's power supply fell below the stipulated level, and it began to impose electricity cuts during peak usage periods. According to Rizvanolli, the government decided to establish a technical committee to evaluate emergency energy supply strategies in …

Staking and farming platform Bent Finance joins the list to become the sixth crypto establishment to get hacked in December. The acknowledgment of the attack was followed by requesting investors to withdraw their pool funds and disabling the reward claims on the compromised platform. Bent Finance first realized the exploit on Monday at roughly 8:55 PM EST, a timeline when the company reported no loss of funds. However, the community suspected a rug-pull event when blockchain investigator PeckShield allegedly located the source of the hack transactions. We have located the hack tx, which interestingly is sent from the Bent Finance: …

Decentralized automated market maker (AMM) Bancor is set to launch new staking pools and an upgrade to its impermanent loss protection mechanism as part of its long-awaited Bancor 3 update. Bancor was founded in 2017 and was the first DeFi protocol to introduce AMMs to the blockchain. The Ethereum-based exchange and lending platform also allows users to earn staking rewards via various liquidity pools. In a Nov. 30 blog post introducing the upcoming Bancor 3 update, the platform announced several new features and upgrades including the Omnipool, Infinity pools, and “Instant Impermanent Loss Protection.” Introducing Bancor 3 pic.twitter.com/TuIyUnN13U — Bancor …

New York-based crypto-mining service provider Foundry USA takes the lead to become the world’s second-largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool after taking up a 15.42% share of the network. Data from BTC.com shows that Digital Currency Group-owned Foundry USA stands behind the pool leader AntPool by a hash rate of just 4,000 PH/s, which contributed to a 17.76% network share at the time of writing. The rise in the participation of American entities can be attributed to China’s recent blanket ban on crypto trading and mining activities. The ban forced a large-scale migration of local Bitcoin miners, who now reside in …

The amount of Ether (ETH) that is being held by miners has reached record levels in terms of United States dollars, as they remain reluctant to sell. The balance held by Ether miners is the largest it has been since shortly after the network was launched five years ago. When converted into USD, it is at a historic peak of $1.85 billion, according to data provided by analytics platform Santiment. The firm stated that the 532,750 ETH is the largest balance held by miners since July 13, 2016. The amount equates to around 0.45% of the total circulating supply of …

BeePool, the fourth-largest Ether (ETH) mining pool, is closing amid China’s crypto crackdown. The China-based Ether mining pool announced on Tuesday it would suspend operations “in response to the latest regulatory policies.” Effective immediately, the registration of new users and the addition of sub-accounts for existing users will be discontinued, and all mining access servers are expected to have stopped operating by Oct. 15. The announcement comes just a day after news broke that SparkPool, the second-largest Ether mining pool, will have suspended operations by the end of the month for similar reasons. Between them, BeePool and SparkPool account for …

Bitcoin (BTC) might have outperformed traditional financial markets regarding investment returns, but the cryptocurrency still fell behind Bitcoin-related companies. The price of BTC climbed by about 290% year-over-year in which it surged from $10,695 to a little over $42,000. In comparison, shares of Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA), one of the largest North American crypto mining companies, rose by 1,641% in the same period. Institutions-led pump More crypto mining firms outran spot BTC prices in terms of YoY returns. For instance, Canada-based Bitfarms (BITF) surged 1,736%, while Hut 8 Mining (HUT) and Riot Blockchain (RIOT) rallied by 1,010% and 913% in …