Poolin, Once One of Bitcoin's Biggest Mining Pools, Files for Bankruptcy
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- Poolin Technology filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 22 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, covering itself and two U.S. affiliates, Lonestar Dream Inc. and Lonestar Taproot LLC.
- The largest single debt — $163.7 million — is owed to approximately 11,700 wallet users who received IOU tokens after Poolin froze withdrawals in September 2022, according to Chief Restructuring Officer Michael DuFrayne.
- Court documents list roughly $100 million in prepetition obligations against less than $10 million in assets, per the filing.
- Lonestar Dream, Poolin's Texas mining and hosting unit, shut down entirely on July 10, and the company says it does not intend to resume operations.
- Thor CALAP LLC placed a $52 million stalking-horse bid for Poolin's two West Texas mining sites, setting the floor for a court-supervised auction — but the bid covers only physical infrastructure, not the frozen wallet balances.
- The Texas mining operations had accumulated approximately $45.9 million in losses since opening, plus an additional $8.8 million from selling equipment at discounted prices between fiscal 2023 and 2025.
- Poolin was founded in Beijing in 2017 by Bitmain veterans Zhibiao "Kevin" Pan, Fa Zhu, and Tianzhao Li, and at its peak controlled nearly a fifth of Bitcoin's global network hashrate.
Why it matters: Recovery for the 11,700 IOU holders now depends almost entirely on what the Texas auction brings in, and Thor CALAP's $52 million stalking-horse bid covers only physical infrastructure — nowhere near the $163.7 million owed to users whose funds have been locked since September 2022.
