Quick Summary
Binance — the largest crypto exchange on earth — just announced it is shutting down Binance Pool on November 10, 2026, ending a six-year run. In that time the pool mined 22,188 blocks and collected 137,059 BTC in block rewards, worth roughly $11.4 billion at today’s price.
The notice, issued October 12, kills Binance Pool, Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, the Transaction Accelerator, Telegram hashrate alerts, email notifications and the mining pool API. It offers no reason. Not one sentence explaining why the biggest exchange in crypto is walking away from the network that made it rich.
Binance Pool was still the ninth-largest mining pool on the network when the announcement landed, pushing 19.7 EH/s and finding roughly three blocks a day. It joins SBI Crypto Pool and Poolin on the scrap heap. Meanwhile 127 entities — including a growing crowd of solo miners — are still producing blocks.
What Happened
The notice
On October 12, Binance published a formal notice to customers:
“As part of our ongoing review of products and services, Binance will discontinue Binance Pool and related services on 2026-11-10.”
That is the entire explanation. “Ongoing review of products and services.” The same phrase a company uses when it delists a token or retires a promo code.
The notice does give instructions for claiming remaining eligible mining shares and disconnecting from the pool. It does not give a reason. Curiously, a company that runs the largest trading venue in crypto could not spare one line for why it is abandoning Bitcoin mining after six years.
The receipts
- Launched April 24, 2020, at block height 627,474.
- 22,188 blocks mined under the Binance Pool banner.
- 137,059 BTC collected in coinbase rewards — about $11.4 billion at $83,400 per coin.
- 19.7 EH/s of hashrate, roughly three blocks every 24 hours.
- Ninth-largest mining pool by hashrate at the moment it announced the shutdown.
Six years of coordinating other people’s miners, collecting a fee on every block, then a one-paragraph goodbye with the reason left blank.
The pattern nobody wants to name
Binance is not the first, and it will not be the last. Japan’s SBI Holdings wound down SBI Crypto Pool on July 2, 2026. Poolin filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey on July 22, 2026, carrying $173 million in debt and pushing a $52 million asset sale.
Why now? Because mining margins are thin, and the same machines sitting in the same buildings can be pointed at AI datacentre workloads that pay better and swing less. Capital does not care about the network. It cares about the spread — and the spread moved.
Why This Matters for Bitcoin
Here is the uncomfortable part: this is not bad news for Bitcoin. It is bad news for anyone who thought an exchange was on their side.
A mining pool is not a miner. It is a coordinator. Binance Pool never owned the hashrate — it rented miners’ loyalty by smoothing payouts and taking a cut. When the loyalty stops paying, the coordinator leaves and the hashrate simply points somewhere else. The network does not notice. It has not noticed for seventeen years.
What this tells you is where an exchange’s incentives actually live. Binance mined the Bitcoin network for six years, extracted $11.4 billion in block rewards, then walked away without a word when the economics turned. That is a business line being closed, not a conviction being tested.
The lesson from the week OCEAN silently redirected its miners’ hashrate to a dead fork for 18 hours was “not your pool, not your hash.” This is the sequel: a pool can also just cease to exist and leave you to reconnect your rigs on your own time. The only hashrate you genuinely control is the hashrate you own.
Which is exactly why the solo miner story matters. Mining revenue is not dead — it recovered hard this year — and miningpoolstats still shows 127 entities contributing blocks: a long tail of small pools and individual operators running a single miner on a desk, building block templates nobody’s compliance department approved. And the direction of travel inside the big pools is not neutral either — MARA’s private mempool already shows what happens when a listed miner gets to see your transaction first.
The Love Is Bitcoin Takeaway
Exchanges mine, lend, custody, and sell you hashrate. Then they rotate into whatever pays next. That is their job. Your job is to stop confusing their quarterly review with your long-term conviction.
Mining is not a business for you. It is a vote. Every block you help find is a block that no committee approved.
If you want Bitcoin exposure without a counterparty, buy it non-custodially through Bull Bitcoin — your coins land in a wallet you control, not on an exchange balance sheet. Use coupon code LOVEISBITCOIN.
If you want to participate in the network instead of just watching it, a Bitaxe home miner draws less power than a lightbulb, runs silent on a shelf, and gives you a real lottery ticket on a real block. Solo mining is how the little guy stays in the game when the big pools file Chapter 11.
What Beginners Should Do Next
- If you mine through a pool, read the payout terms now — before you need them — and know which other pools you could point at tomorrow.
- Understand the difference between hashrate you own and hashrate you rent. Only one of them survives a company’s “ongoing review of products and services.”
- Run your own node so your wallet verifies Bitcoin’s rules itself instead of trusting an exchange’s balance sheet.
- Start small. One home miner on a solo pool is the cheapest education in how Bitcoin actually works.
- Buy in self-custody and hold your own keys. Everything else is somebody else’s product.
FAQ
Did Binance Pool shutting down hurt Bitcoin?
No. Pools are coordinators, not miners. The hashrate re-points to other pools within days and difficulty adjusts exactly as designed. Bitcoin has absorbed the death of far larger pools than this one.
Why is Binance closing its mining pool?
Binance has not said. The notice cites an “ongoing review of products and services.” The industry context is thin mining margins and datacentre capacity rotating toward AI workloads.
How much did Binance Pool actually mine?
22,188 blocks and 137,059 BTC in block rewards since April 2020 — roughly $11.4 billion at recent prices near $83,400.
What happens to miners still using Binance Pool?
They have until November 10, 2026 to claim remaining eligible mining shares and disconnect. Binance is also discontinuing Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, the Transaction Accelerator, Telegram hashrate alerts, email notifications, and the mining pool API.
Is solo mining still worth it?
For guaranteed profit, rarely. For participation and education, absolutely — and occasionally for a life-changing block. Solo miners still find blocks because the lottery never closes.
Final Thoughts
Six years. 22,188 blocks. 137,059 BTC. And a goodbye that fits in a paragraph.
The exchange that told the world it was the future of finance just quietly unplugged a business that touched the actual Bitcoin network — because the spread got thin and AI pays better.
Nobody is coming to explain it to you. Nobody ever does.
So here is the question: if the biggest exchange in crypto will not run a mining pool when margins tighten, what exactly do you think it will do with your coins when the pressure lands on it?
Source: Bitcoin.com News — “Binance Pulls the Plug on Bitcoin Mining After 6-Year Run” by Jamie Redman. Pool statistics via mempool.space and miningpoolstats.
BINANCE MINED $11.4 BILLION OF BITCOIN IN SIX YEARS — THEN KILLED ITS OWN MINING POOL AND NEVER SAID WHY
