Solo miner wins $200K Bitcoin lottery | Bitcoin News by CoinCorner

Transcript

Japan may be lowering taxes on Bitcoin and crypto assets. The former CEO of the failed crypto exchange, Mt. Gox, is launching another crypto exchange, and a solo Bitcoin miner has beaten the odds by successfully mining a Bitcoin block, earning themselves a huge payday.

Looking first at Bitcoin's price, it's been another week of lacklustre performance, with the price still consolidating between $56,000 and $60,000 per coin. No big moves yet, as it seems the market is waiting for clear direction from the Fed to see if interest rate cuts will be coming later this month.

Now, for our first story: a solo Bitcoin miner has just hit the jackpot by successfully processing a block, earning themselves around $200,000. What makes this so unusual is that the miner only utilised 456 petahashes worth of hash rate when the block was solved. The average network hash rate is currently 665 exahashes per second, meaning the miner that processed the transaction is running at around 0.012% of the average hash rate.

Typically, Bitcoin miners mine within what’s called a mining pool, where hash rates are combined to be more competitive, and the mining reward is distributed amongst the pool when a block is successfully processed. However, this miner was part of the Solo CK Pool, which does combine hash rates but only distributes the reward to the miner responsible for solving the block, making it a much more high-risk, high-reward strategy.

For context, a solo miner successfully processing a block is so rare that it’s only occurred roughly 290 times out of 859,000 blocks produced since Bitcoin’s inception 14 years ago.

Also in the world of mining, one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies, Genesis Digital Assets (GDA), has announced plans to expand their recently launched 60-megawatt Texas data centre to 400 MW, whilst utilising the state’s renewable energy and pro-innovation policies. GDA’s mining operation is supported by the Oakley Union substation near the city of Vernon, and it makes use of energy generated from substantial wind power. The data centre, which repurposed the retired Oakley Union power station, has brought back dozens of jobs lost when the plant was closed in 2020, and so far, it has generated 12 permanent roles and 150 construction jobs, which demonstrates some of Bitcoin’s real-world benefits.

Now, moving on to traditional finance: Switzerland’s fourth-largest bank, Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB), has launched Bitcoin trading and custody services. The bank, with over $290 billion in assets under management, providing traditional services to retail, corporate, and institutional clients, has now partnered with Deutsche Börse-owned Crypto Finance AG to offer their clients Bitcoin trading and custody solutions through its app and online banking platform.

Switzerland has generally taken a positive stance on Bitcoin and crypto, as the Swiss National Bank revealed it holds shares in MicroStrategy. This move from ZKB shows the country’s openness to Bitcoin in a big way and cements its legitimacy among traditional finance. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, as it could pressure other Swiss and European banks to follow suit.

Also in the news, Japan’s financial regulator has released plans for a comprehensive overhaul of the tax code for 2025, which could result in a lower tax rate on crypto assets. In the 30th of August tax reform request, Japan’s Financial Services Agency highlighted crypto assets, pushing for them to be treated like traditional financial assets that the public can invest in.

According to crypto accountants TokenTax, crypto profits in Japan are currently taxed as miscellaneous income, which could be at a rate between 15% and 55%, depending on your income, whereas profits earned from stock trading only incur a tax rate of 20% at the highest levels. As positive as this would be in getting fairer tax treatment in Japan, the reform will only be passed into law if it is approved by both houses of the Japanese government: the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors.

Next up, to the Bitcoin community’s disappointment, it has been revealed that Dell Technologies has not made an allocation to Bitcoin. In a filing on the 29th of August, the company revealed strong earnings based on growing AI demand, but there was no mention of Bitcoin in their earnings call or results filing.

There had been a lot of speculation over the summer that the tech giant may have been considering putting Bitcoin on their balance sheet after CEO Michael Dell gave the very distinct impression he was bullish on Bitcoin with a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). Many still speculate that he could have a personal allocation, but we’ll have to wait and see if Michael confirms this or if he alludes to anything else regarding his future plans with the asset.

Now, a final story follows Mark Karpelès, the former CEO of the failed crypto exchange Mt. Gox, who is launching a new crypto exchange called ELPX in September. Based in Poland, the platform will initially serve European users, with plans to expand globally. It will start as crypto-only but may potentially add banking and fiat currency services later. The platform aims to comply with the European Union's Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation.

Karpelès believes that security and technology within the space now allow for safe storage of cryptocurrencies, and he wants to lead by example in a transparent way, which is somewhat ironic considering Mt. Gox’s collapse after it was hacked in 2014, resulting in customers losing around $9 billion worth of crypto assets. It has taken a decade for customers to receive any reimbursements. After receiving death threats over the years, Karpelès now feels that the community may be softening towards him, after he was invited to talk at a conference. He plans to try and regain trust by offering reparations to those affected by the collapse of Mt. Gox by offering at least 50% of trading fees on ELPX. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it works and if it’s that easy to regain trust.