Poolin Technology, the Singapore-based firm that once ran one of Bitcoin's biggest mining pools, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 22 in a New Jersey court, together with two Texas affiliates, Lonestar Dream and Lonestar Taproot. Its largest debt: $163.7 million owed to roughly 11,700 users whose funds have sat frozen since 2022.
Three former Bitmain engineers — Kevin Pan, Fa Zhu and Tianzhao Li — founded the pool in 2017. At its peak in 2019 and 2020, Poolin processed close to a fifth of the entire Bitcoin network's hashrate, ranking among the world's largest mining operations.
The trouble started in September 2022, when Poolin froze withdrawals from Poolin Wallet as the broader crypto market crashed. Pan blamed liquidity problems in a WeChat message to users. Rather than repaying deposits, the company handed out IOU tokens that were never redeemed.
By the time of the filing, Poolin's share of global hashrate had shrunk to effectively nothing. Liabilities top $100 million against less than $10 million in assets. On top of the wallet debt, the company racked up $45.9 million in losses from its Texas mining operation and another $8.8 million from selling equipment at fire-sale prices between 2023 and 2025. Those Texas sites shut down completely on July 10, 2026.
The only real assets left — two mining sites in West Texas — are headed to a court-supervised auction. Thor CALAP has already placed a $52 million stalking-horse bid, setting the opening price. That's nowhere near enough to cover what's owed, so the users who have waited almost four years will likely recover only cents on the dollar. Poolin did not respond to requests for comment.
