A solo Bitcoin miner hit the jackpot early Friday, mining a block without a pool of supporting miners and bagging a $266,000 reward in the process. But just how realistic is such a feat?

On Friday, an unknown miner processed Bitcoin block 888,737. The block contained 2,327 transactions and the miner received a payout of 3.125 BTC, as well as 0.032 BTC in fees. 

At today’s Bitcoin price of $84,257 per coin, that’s a more than $266,000 payday.

Bitcoin miners work to process blocks on the cryptocurrency’s network. Blocks are full of transaction data and are part of the Bitcoin blockchain.

Miners are given newly minted coins: a 3.125 BTC fixed reward, along with the transaction fees paid by those using the payment system during that particular block window. 

As the network has grown, mining operations have become more energy-intensive, and are typically now industrial-sized setups consisting of warehouses full of machines. 

But occasionally, a solo miner can score big using a home hobby machine. In this case, according to blockchain data, the miner was using a DIY FutureBit Apollo machine. 

However, experts told Decrypt that things might not be as simple as they sound: “solo mining,” per blockchain jargon, technically refers to any miner that’s not in a mining pool. Pools are groups of crypto miners that share their resources so that they have a better chance of processing a transaction. But they also then share the reward.

“The term ‘solo miner’ is a really broad term,” pseudonymous Bitcoin miner Econoalchemist told Decrypt. “It could just be one dude in his apartment, or a warehouse full of high-powered miners.”

Ultimately, this means that a “solo miner” could have a room full of hobby miners all switched on and working to secure a transaction. Such an operation wouldn’t necessarily be as easy—or cheap—to set up, though it would give the miner a better shot at securing a block win.

Still, with solo miners securing numerous block wins in recent months, Friday’s news may spur more Bitcoiners to try and have a go at home mining.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

The United States Treasury announced Friday that it has delisted Ethereum coin mixing service Tornado Cash from its list of parties sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, reversing course after first blacklisting the service in 2022.

“Based on the Administration’s review of the novel legal and policy issues raised by use of financial sanctions against financial and commercial activity occurring within evolving technology and legal environments, we have exercised our discretion to remove the economic sanctions against Tornado Cash as reflected in Treasury’s Monday filing in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury,” the Treasury said Friday.

But the Treasury Department is actually tardy in its sanctions reversal.

In November, a fifth circuit judge ruled that the Treasury Dept. had overstepped its authority by targeting Tornado Cash’s smart contracts. The judge wrote that autonomous software cannot be classified as property and therefore cannot be sanctioned.

After the judge’s ruling, Department of Justice prosecutors asked that the Treasury be granted a 60-day delay. That pushed OFAC’s deadline to March 17.

Coinbase backed the lawsuit, arguing that the sanctioning of Tornado Cash was unjust. And Paul Grewal, the crypto exchange’s chief legal officer, has had a lot to say about the delays.

There’s also a pending money laundering trial against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, who was arrested in 2023. In November, after the ruling that the Tornado Cash sanctions were an overreach, a U.S. district court judge struck down Storm’s motion to have his case dismissed.

The Treasury Dept. initially sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, saying in a statement at the time that it had been used “to launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019.”

In Friday’s statement, the Treasury said that it continues to be concerned about money laundering, particularly from North Korea—whose malicious hacking groups have stolen billions from various crypto protocols and companies. But the department is trying to balance maintaining vigilance without stamping out innovation in the process.

“Digital assets present enormous opportunities for innovation and value creation for the American people,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, in a statement. “Securing the digital asset industry from abuse by North Korea and other illicit actors is essential to establishing U.S. leadership and ensuring that the American people can benefit from financial innovation and inclusion.”

It’s worth noting that despite the U.S. sanctions and lawsuits, Tornado Cash was never actually disabled—much to the chagrin of lawamkers. In fact, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin very publicly declared that he had used it to privately make donations to support Ukraine in its war with Russia.

Editor’s note: This story was updated after publication with additional detail.

Edited by Andrew Hayward

President Donald Trump vowed to make America the “undisputed Bitcoin superpower and crypto capital of the world,” during video remarks delivered to the Digital Asset Summit conference in New York Thursday.

It was only last night that Blockworks, the conference organizer, announced Trump would address attendees at its Digital Asset Summit in New York on Thursday morning. The 3-minute long address marks the first time ever that a sitting president would address a crypto industry conference.

Although the President didn’t announce any new initiatives, he reiterated that he’s called on Congress to pass “landmark legislation creating simple, common sense rules for stablecoins.”

With it, he said, “institutions large and small will be liberated to innovate and take part in one of the most exciting technological revolutions in modern history.”

Just last week, the Senate voted to pass the Genius Act out of committee with strong bipartisan support. The bill’s sponsors, including Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), have said they intend for the GENIUS Act to receive a full vote on the Senate floor by the end of next month.

If the bill passes, it would create provisions addressing reserve requirements, audits, transparency, and licensing for stablecoin issuers.

Echoes of Nashville Bitcoin conference

During his unprecedented in-person appearance at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, while he was still campaigning for reelection, Trump urged attendees to “never sell your Bitcoin.” That speech was also the first time that the President alluded to keeping the Bitcoin that had already been seized by the government.

“As the final part of my plan today, I am announcing that if I am elected, it will be the policy of my administration, the United States of America, to keep 100% of all the Bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future,” Trump said at the time.

So far, President Trump seems intent on making good on his campaign promise.

On March 6, he signed an executive order to create the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. But the investors were disappointed to see that he was initially sticking to his plan to keep Bitcoin the government had seized or confiscated in connection to crimes rather than use a portion of its budget to buy BTC.

But there are efforts underway to see that it does. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced her BITCOIN Act in the Senate last week. If passed, it would allow the government to acquire up to $80 billion worth of Bitcoin.

Just days later, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would enshrine into law the President’s proposed Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. But the bill is crucially different from the legislation Lummis introduced in the Senate.

While Lummis’ bill specifies how much more Bitcoin the government could add to its reserve, Donalds’ bill would authorize the U.S. Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary to add an unspecified amount of Bitcoin to a federal reserve if such acquisitions were “budget neutral,” Donalds told Decrypt in a statement.

It’s worth mentioning his draft of the bill contains no such provision.

Edited by James Rubin.