Poolin is insolvent: Why your pool balance was never really yours

By Dominik Lederer, Founder, Hardware Engineer & Solo Mining Expert · July 26, 2026 · Approx. 8 minutes read

There are insolvencies that surprise no one, yet tell a fundamental story. Around 2020, Poolin was one of the two largest mining pools on the planet. At times, a double-digit percentage of the entire Bitcoin hashrate ran through this company's servers. Now it faces a court in New Jersey and is selling its last two sites in West Texas, so at least some creditors see something.

I read the court notices twice over the weekend. Not because of the 173 million. Because of another number: 11,700. That's how many wallet customers with more than 100 US dollars in credit have been waiting for their money since September 2022. Almost four years. These people did nothing wrong. They didn't speculate, didn't leverage, didn't transfer money to a scammer. They mined and left their earnings where they accrued: in their pool account.

What exactly happened at Poolin?

The chronology reads like a textbook on slow bleeding. In May 2021, China bans Bitcoin mining, Poolin's home market collapses. The company relocates its infrastructure to West Texas, but is allocated less power capacity than planned, sits on too much ordered hardware, and, according to its own court statements, loses 8.8 million US dollars just from emergency hardware sales. In mid-2022, the Bitcoin price drops, lenders issue margin calls, and in September 2022, Poolin freezes all payouts. Customer balances are converted into promissory notes, so-called IOUs. On July 10, 2026, the company completely ceases operations, followed by the Chapter 11 filing with the US Bankruptcy Court in the District of New Jersey on July 22.

The bare figures from the court documents: approximately 173 million US dollars in total debt, of which 163.7 million US dollars are unsecured promissory notes to wallet customers. Against this stand estimated assets of just 1 to 10 million US dollars plus an already negotiated sale of the two Texas sites Pyote and Tarbush to the company Thor CALAP for a total of 52 million US dollars. Even if the sale goes through and subsequent bidders drive up the price: anyone looking at the gap between 52 and 173 million does not need an insolvency administrator to guess that the 11,700 customers will not see everything again.

The details come from the report by Bitcoin.com News from July 24, 2026, which summarizes the court documents.

Why does bankruptcy affect customers who never wanted to risk anything?

This is where it gets uncomfortable, and for the entire pool industry. If you mine with a mining pool using an account model, your earnings first go to the pool. Legally, these funds are not held property like in a bank safe deposit box. They are a claim against a private company. If the company goes bankrupt, the claim enters the insolvency estate, and the miner becomes an unsecured creditor. Behind the lawyers, behind the tax office, behind the secured loans.

This is exactly what happened at Poolin. Customers did not hold Bitcoin. They held a promise of Bitcoin. The difference only becomes apparent when the promise breaks.

I want to be fair: today's large pools are more professionally set up than Poolin was in 2022, many pay out automatically daily. But the principle remains. Every minute between block discovery and payout to your own address is a minute in which your money belongs to someone else. Under normal circumstances, you never notice this. Poolin was the abnormal case, to the tune of over 163.7 million dollars.

How does Solo Mining differ from a pool balance?

The difference lies in a single transaction, the Coinbase transaction. This is the first transaction of every Bitcoin block, in which the network generates the block reward. With typical solo pools like Solo CKPool or Public Pool, the block your device is working on carries your own wallet address as the recipient from the start. If your Bitaxe Home Solo Miner finds a block, the pool doesn't pay you out. The Bitcoin network itself directly credits you with 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees, at the current rate approximately 176,900 Euros (BTC price 56,614.57 Euros, BTC-ECHO, exchange rate dependent, as of July 26, 2026). There is no account that can be frozen because there never was an account.

How this moment technically unfolds, from the 100 confirmations to the maturity period of the Coinbase, I have described step by step in the article about the process after a block discovery. And why solo mining remains outside the concentration of large pools is covered in the article about mining without a pool account and KYC.

Honesty dictates the rest: solo mining with 1.3 TH/s is a lottery. With a network hashrate of approximately 905 EH/s (range depending on source 900 to 910 EH/s, derived from the current difficulty of 127.17 trillion, as of July 26, 2026), the chance of a Bitaxe Gamma 601 finding a block is about 1 in 13,245 per year. The statistical expected value is around 13 Euros per year, which is less than the approximately 52 Euros in annual electricity costs in Germany (149 kWh at 0.35 Euros per kWh). Anyone buying a Bitaxe is not buying a return. They are buying a lottery ticket that never expires, and the certainty that a hit is entirely theirs.

How do you check if your mining setup has a custody risk?

Three questions are enough. I ask them to everyone who writes to me saying they just want to "mine a little":

Step 1: Where does the block reward flow?

If your own wallet address is in the Coinbase transaction, the discovery belongs to you from second one. If the earnings first land in a pool account, you have a claim, not ownership.

Step 2: Are there payout thresholds or approvals?

Minimum payout amounts and manual approvals mean: your money is with the provider until their rules are met. Poolin's customers also knew these rules. Until September 2022.

Step 3: Do you need an account to even start?

Solo pools like Solo CKPool do not require registration, only a Bitcoin address. No account means: nothing that can be frozen, hacked, or become part of an insolvency estate.

Pool Account, Lottery or Your Own Miner: What fits in your living room?

Lifestyle Criterion	Bitaxe Gamma (Solo Miner)	Traditional Lottery	3500-W Industrial Antminer
Chances of Winning per Year	About 1 in 13,245 for the full block reward of 3.125 BTC plus transaction fees, currently about 176,900 Euros (exchange rate dependent, as of July 26, 2026). The discovery lands directly in your wallet, with no pool account in between.	Eurojackpot: 1 in 139,838,160 per tip. Last week's ticket is today's waste paper, your stake irrecoverably lost.	Mathematically about 1 in 64 at 270 TH/s, numerically stronger. But practically only useful in pool operation, i.e., with exactly the account risk that this is about.
Running Costs in Home Office	About 52 Euros electricity per year at 17 watts, less than many WLAN routers. Runs casually on the shelf.	Two tip fields per week cost well over 200 Euros over the year, without ever creating hardware with resale value.	Over 10,700 Euros electricity per year at German household prices, plus noise protection, plus heavy current question. Simply unthinkable in the living room.
Drawer Hazard (Boredom Factor)	Low: AxeOS dashboard, temperatures, best difficulty. The device gives something to check every day, without demanding time.	High: Cross off numbers, lose, forget. No learning effect, no story to tell.	High in a different way: Unusable loud as a home device, disappears into the basement or hall and becomes a pure cost center.
Learning Effect & Hands-on Blockchain Fascination	Maximum: You see live how your device works on the real network, understand Coinbase, difficulty, and wallets firsthand.	Zero. The lottery ticket explains nothing about probabilities, it just charges for them.	Technically yes, practically no: Industrial devices are built for throughput, not for understanding. Nobody watches an Antminer at work.

What does Chapter 11 mean specifically for the frozen funds now?

Chapter 11 is not a death sentence, but an orderly process. Poolin intends to sell the Texas sites and distribute the proceeds according to a liquidation plan; the bidding process is under court supervision and allows for higher offers. Of interest is the note in the court records that the power capacity of the sites could be attractive for AI data centers. It would be a bitter irony if the AI boom, which is currently restructuring half the mining industry, precisely gives the affected Poolin customers a few cents more per dollar of claim.

A prognosis of the final quota would be unserious, and that is precisely why I am not making one. Only the order is certain: first the procedure, then the secured creditors, then all others. The 11,700 wallet customers are in the last group.

"A block discovery that goes directly to your own address in the Coinbase transaction can never become part of an insolvency estate. That's not a product feature, that's the whole point of Bitcoin."
Dominik Lederer, Founder Polarblocks

Frequently Asked Questions about Poolin Insolvency and Pool Risk

Is my balance with a mining pool secured?

No. Pool balances are not bank deposits; there is no deposit insurance. In the event of insolvency, you become an unsecured creditor, just like the approximately 11,700 Poolin customers with a total of 163.7 million US dollars in claims.

Can a solo pool like Solo CKPool freeze my money?

A balance in the classic sense does not even arise there. The block your device is computing on carries your own address as the recipient of the block reward. The operator can cease operations, then you switch pools, but they never hold your Bitcoin at any time.

Will Poolin customers get their money back?

Uncertain. There are 173 million US dollars in debt against only an estimated 1 to 10 million in assets plus the planned 52 million sale of the Texas sites. A full repayment is unlikely given these figures; the final quota will be decided by the proceedings.

My Conclusion: The most expensive lesson is the one others have already paid for

Poolin will not be the last pool bankruptcy. Hashprice under pressure, capital migrating to AI data centers, and operators who calculate tightly eventually treat customer funds as operating capital. This is not a conspiracy theory; this is the Poolin court file: loans, margin calls, pledged customer assets, payout freeze.

You can draw two conclusions from this. The comfortable one: "Doesn't affect me, my pool pays out daily." The honest one: custody risk doesn't disappear just because it doesn't hurt right now. A 17-watt device on the shelf, whose block discovery can belong to no one but you, is the most consistent answer to this week. Not the most profitable, I honestly calculated that above. But the most sovereign.