Author: rb809rb

Talk about winning the lottery. A solo miner walked away with over $200,000 in bitcoin while renting just $75 of hash power.

A solo miner validated block 938,092 around 8:04 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, earning the full 3.125 $BTC block reward using hashrate rented through on-demand cloud services, according to blockchain data from Mempool.space.

The miner spent roughly 119,000 satoshis, about $75, to rent 1 petahash per second of computing power and used CKPool, a service that lets individual miners work independently while relying on a pool server to broadcast and submit solutions.

The math on that return is absurd. It’s a 2,600x payoff on what amounts to a lottery ticket with better odds than most actual lotteries.

Bitcoin’s network processes transactions by bundling them into blocks, which are added to the blockchain roughly every 10 minutes. Miners compete to solve a cryptographic puzzle for the right to add each block, and the winner collects the reward.

The competition is measured in hashrate, the amount of computing power a miner throws at the puzzle. More hashrate means more guesses per second and better odds.

Statistically rare

A solo miner renting 1 petahash is like bringing a slingshot to a gunfight. The odds of that single petahash solving a block before the industrial operations do are vanishingly small, roughly equivalent to finding one specific grain of sand on a beach.

But someone has to win each block, and probability doesn’t care about scale. As such, while solo-mined blocks remain statistically rare, they’re not as rare as they used to be.

Data from solo mining aggregator Bennet shows 21 individual miners have successfully validated blocks over the past year, earning a combined 66 $BTC worth $4.1 million at current prices. That’s a 17% increase in solo blocks found year-over-year, with one landing roughly every 17 days on average.

The rise of on-demand hashrate rental has lowered the barrier to entry.

Miners no longer need to own physical hardware to take a shot. Cloud-based services let anyone rent computing power for as little as a few dollars, turning solo mining from an infrastructure-heavy operation into something closer to a scratch-off card with transparent odds.

Meanwhile, the lucky block landed during an interesting moment for bitcoin mining economics.

Network difficulty just climbed to 144.4 trillion after the latest adjustment, a 15% increase that reversed an 11% drop caused by severe U.S. winter storms earlier this month. The climb means miners now need on the order of 144.4 trillion hash attempts, on average, to find a valid block, compared with the very first blocks in 2009.

That storm-driven decline was the sharpest hashrate drop since China’s 2021 mining ban, temporarily making blocks easier to find before the network recalibrated.

And for one miner with $75 and good timing, the window was enough.

• Uniswap price jumped to above $4 on Wednesday as Bitcoin retested $68,000.
• The $UNI token could eye $5 amid an oversold bounce across crypto.
• If bulls fail to rally, key support lies around $3.48 and $3.00.

Uniswap ($UNI) price has surged nearly 20% in recent trading, climbing to intraday highs above $4.00 as top altcoins retest critical resistance levels.

This rebound aligns with Bitcoin’s spike in the past 24 hours, which sees BTC trade above $68,000 and altcoins, including Ethereum, XRP, and BNB, target oversold bounces above $2,000, $1.50, and $620, respectively.

As with these top altcoins, on-chain data shows Uniswap price ticking up from oversold conditions. Morpho was among the coins to see sharp gains on the day.

Uniswap price pumps to above $4

The sharp decline on February 5, 2026, saw $UNI price dump to $3.00, and a subsequent attempt to break higher failed as prices hovered in a range capped at around $3.60.

Overall, weakness in digital assets amid macro headwinds contributed to this outlook.

However, despite risk assets remaining largely bearish, $UNI’s uptick to $4.00 amid a 62% spike in daily volume reflects fresh optimism.

Uniswap’s gains in the past 24 hours build on the positive movement that followed BlackRock’s recent strategic purchase of $UNI.

The global asset management giant plans to use the tokens to facilitate trading of its BUIDL tokenized Treasury fund via Uniswap.

Data on the market platform Coinglass highlights the improvement in on-chain metrics for $UNI.

Open interest is picking up, and funding rates are positive. This suggests recent weakness has provided entry opportunities for buyers.

Bitcoin’s push above $68,000 and Ethereum’s breach of $2,000 may catalyze further gains for small-cap tokens.

What next for $UNI price?

Although Uniswap’s price is up by double digits on the day, it remains in the red over the past week, month, and year-to-date.

Uniswap price chart by TradingView

Technical indicators also suggest that $UNI at $4.00 is below key moving averages, including the 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day SMAs.

Daily RSI at 56, however, signals an extended bounce from oversold territory, and significantly, has room for another leg up before bulls hit overbought extremes.

Meanwhile, the MACD histogram hints at fresh bullish momentum with $3.20 having formed a potential bottom.

Bollinger Bands position $UNI above the upper band, which is currently at $3.81.

If prices break above the 50-day SMA, bulls will have eyes on the 100 SMA ($5.09).

This hurdle aligns with a horizontal resistance line that also acted as support in November and December 2025.

However, near-term bearish targets are alive. The lower Bollinger band at $3.48 offers the first major demand reload zone. Below this, bulls could rely on support at $3.00.

The world’s largest $BNB treasury company has crashed 95% from its high last year and is blaming the family office of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) for a “secret side agreement.”

On Tuesday, it issued a press release demanding that CZ’s YZi Labs disclose a confidentiality provision between his family office and 10X Capital Asset Management LLC, the lead party in the company’s July 2025 PIPE transaction that coincided with its 52-week and multi-year high of $82.88 per share.

Shares of CEA Industries, which changed Nasdaq ticker symbols from VAPE to BNC — an attempt to pivot the company’s brand to a $BNB Network Company — now trade at $3.88 after losing 95% of their value over the past seven months.

Before becoming a $BNB treasury company during the height of the digital asset treasury (DAT) mania in the summer of 2025, CEA Industries was operating Canadian vape retailers.

That business model, as well as several business models and pivots including a previous ticker change from CEAD to VAPE, failed to reverse a multi-year decline in its common stock from a $873 peak in 2018 to under $8 by the time of its acquisition of 33 Canadian vape locations.

By July 2025, the company had yet again began looking for a new trend.

It found a suitor in Cantor Fitzgerald, founded by US Commerce Secretary and Jeffrey Epstein’s former neighbor Howard Lutnick, who acted as the lead financial advisor to 10X Capital and sole placement agent to CEA Industries.

Read more: Binance demands the Wall Street Journal remove ‘damaging’ article

Another Cantor Fitzgerald-advised treasury flop

Cantor Fitzgerald helped raise capital for other DATs like Twenty One, Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company, and Nakamoto.

In fact, the same 10X Capital that led CEA Industries’ $500 million PIPE also served as financial advisor to Nakamoto, which has declined 99% in value from its May 2025 peak. Twenty One is down 89% since May, and Bitcoin Standard Treasury Company is down 37% since July.

Despite its financial devastation, CEA Industries’ 95% decline is somewhat unremarkable among DATs.

10X Capital acted as CEA Industries’ $BNB asset manager “with the support of YZi Labs.” According to CEA Industries, that support is potentially problematic, and it wants to force disclosure of how, exactly, CZ’s family office “supported” 10X Capital’s management of $BNB.

10X Capital’s Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Russell Read became CIO of CEA Industries shortly after the PIPE closed.

By September, the company had relegated him to a non-executive position and by the end of the year, he’d resigned entirely.

Almost everyone lost in $BNB treasury debut

Some of the biggest crypto funds invested in CEA Industries via the PIPE, including Pantera Capital, GSR, Arrington Capital, Borderless, Blockchain.com, Arche Capital, Hypersphere Capital, Kenetic, and the founders of BitFury.

There are two sides to every story.

For its part, YZi Labs has contested CEA Industries’ characterization of the “secret side agreement” as recently as this week.

YZi Labs wants CEA Industries to retract what it calls false claims about that agreement, and it’s requested directors Hans Thomas and David Namdar recuse themselves from asset management discussions.

It also wants to solicit stockholder written consents for board changes.

Amid the infighting, CEA’s common stock has fallen 41% year to date, 67% over the past 12 months, 95% from its 52-week high, and 98% over the past five years.