The carrots are cooked. There was a time when Poolin ruled Bitcoin mining. This was before the Chinese ban of 2021, before the crypto winter of 2022, before a long series of years of rolling with the punches and never really getting back up. This time, the Singaporean mining pool, once one of the biggest players in the sector, ended up throwing in the towel: Poolin Technology filed for Chapter 11 protection on July 22, in New Jersey bankruptcy court.
The key points of this article:
Poolin Technology filed for Chapter 11 protection, marking the end of a slow agony. This bankruptcy symbolizes a turning point for the Bitcoin mining sector, where adaptation to AI has become crucial.
Poolin: a slow agony rather than a sudden collapse
The bill is heavy: more than $173 million in liabilities, for a company that was once among the top five global pools. Unlike other bankruptcies in the sector, marked by a brutal shock, that of Poolin looks more like a long agony. Law360 traces the timeline: China’s mining ban in May 2021 first cut off most of the company’s operations, before Bitcoin’s fall below $20,000 in mid-2022 closed the catch-up window once and for all. What followed didn’t help matters. Spiraling start-up costs, dwindling capital, piling up cross-border legal disputes: Poolin has accumulated bad alignments of planets, without any quarter reversing the trend. The procedure initiated now aims at an orderly sale of the remaining assets, with a canvassing process which has already solicited more than 335 potential buyers, both strategic and financial, in particular from AI/HPC data center operators and cryptocurrency miners.
Bankruptcy in Bitcoin mining: a symptom, not an isolated accident
And this is where the story goes beyond the Poolin case alone. This bankruptcy filing illustrates a broader reality of the mining sector: actors who were unable, in time, to diversify their activity towards high-performance computing or AI today find themselves lagging behind, while their competitors pivot and see their valuation rise. The critical mass switch to AI is no longer an option for Bitcoin miners, it has become a matter of pure and simple survival. The fate of Poolin is not an isolated case in the history of mining: Core Scientific, formerly number one in the sector by hashrate, went through the same Chapter 11 box in 2022 before rebounding, driven in particular by a successful pivot towards computing infrastructure for AI. The difference will come down to the buyer book: Poolin is banking on the appetite of AI/HPC operators to sell its assets, the same bet that allowed Core Scientific to rise from its ashes rather than simply disappear.