It’s what every Bitcoiner dreams of: buying a cheap hobby miner, processing a block with little effort (or energy), and taking home the jackpot. 

And that’s what initially appeared to happen this week, when journalist Pete Rizzo flagged on X (formerly Twitter) that a solo miner using just a cheap home machine (valued at about $400) managed to mine a block and take home a reward of 3.125 Bitcoin—worth almost $330,000 at today’s prices. 

But the reality is perhaps a bit more complicated than appears, as Rizzo explained: A solo operation did indeed use a small FutureBit mining machine—but it also received