Poolin Files Chapter 11: Bitcoin Mining Giant to Auction Texas Sites as 11,700 Users Hold $163.7M in IOUs

The quiet collapse of a onetime hashrate powerhouse is nearly complete. Poolin Technology Pte. Ltd.—the Singapore-based operator that once ranked among Bitcoin’s largest mining pools—filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 22, signaling a court-supervised wind-down anchored by an auction of its last U.S. sites.

The case, lodged in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, includes two American affiliates, Lonestar Dream Inc. and Lonestar Taproot LLC. Filings show prepetition obligations of more than $100 million against less than $10 million in assets. Poolin’s West Texas mining and hosting operations, housed within Lonestar Dream, shut down on July 10 and are not expected to restart.

A $52 million stalking-horse bid from Thor CALAP LLC sets the floor for a court-run sale of Poolin’s two West Texas facilities. That offer covers physical mining infrastructure only and does not touch customer wallet balances—meaning it is materially short of what creditors hope to recover. The Texas units had already racked up roughly $45.9 million in cumulative losses since launch, plus another $8.8 million from discounted equipment sales spanning fiscal 2023 to 2025.

The heart of the creditor body is a single, painful line item: about 11,700 Poolin Wallet holders with $163.7 million in unpaid IOUs, according to a declaration from Chief Restructuring Officer Michael DuFrayne. Those tokens were issued after Poolin froze withdrawals in September 2022, citing “liquidity issues” amid the broader crypto deleveraging. Three-plus years later, repayment hinges largely on auction proceeds from Texas.

Here’s the throughline that matters: Poolin blurred the boundary between a low-margin, infrastructure-heavy mining business and higher-risk financial services. The pool, founded in Beijing in 2017 by Bitmain veterans Zhibiao “Kevin” Pan, Fa Zhu, and Tianzhao Li, at one point coordinated nearly a fifth of Bitcoin’s global hashrate. That scale likely created confidence to expand into lending and interest-bearing accounts via Poolin Wallet. But hashrate leadership does not translate into liquidity management skill. When withdrawals surged during the 2022 crash, the firm shifted from provable BTC balances to IOU abstractions—a psychological and economic step that often erodes trust faster than any temporary pause.

From an operator’s lens, the lesson is structural: mining pools aggregate hashpower; they should not commingle that brand equity with custodial yield products unless capital, risk, and governance are distinctly segregated. Once a pool uses its reputation to attract deposits, users infer security where there may be none. Issuing IOUs tried to buy time but functioned as an off-balance-sheet promise that became the largest liability in the case.

The venue choice also tells a story. A Singapore-based parent filing in New Jersey with U.S. affiliates suggests a pragmatic path to sell U.S. hard assets under clear Chapter 11 procedures. For creditors, the outcome is still math: a $52 million floor versus $163.7 million in wallet claims and over $100 million in total prepetition obligations—before fees, wind-down costs, and any adjustments in a competitive auction.

Bitcoin’s mining economy will move on; hashrate tends to reroute quickly. What will linger is user memory. When a pool crosses into yield, market participants now tend to demand proof of reserves, transparent segregation of duties, and credible risk capital. Poolin’s auction will provide the final datapoint on how much real-world infrastructure can offset a digital IOU stack that was never redeemed.

Recovery for the 11,700 IOU holders largely depends on the Texas sale’s outcome, more than three years after withdrawals were first halted.