Poolin, once the world's largest bitcoin mining pool, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 22 alongside two U.S. affiliates, seeking to sell its West Texas mining sites and wind down operations, according to a review of court filings by TheEnergyMag .
The Singapore-based company filed jointly with Lonestar Dream Inc. and Lonestar Taproot LLC in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey.
Poolin's petition lists an estimated 10,001 to 25,000 creditors, assets of $1 million to $10 million, and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million. A declaration from chief restructuring officer Michael DuFrayne put the debtors' prepetition obligations at about $173.1 million, of which roughly $163.7 million consists of unsecured IOUs issued to Poolin Wallet customers after the company suspended withdrawals during the 2022 crypto market downturn.
The filing is structured to facilitate a court-supervised sale rather than reorganize Poolin as an operating business. Lonestar Dream stopped mining and hosting at its Pyote and Tarbush sites on July 10, keeping only a limited crew to secure the properties. The debtors have lined up Thor CALAP LLC as a stalking-horse bidder, offering $15 million for the Pyote property, power rights and equipment, and $37 million for Tarbush's power rights and equipment, a combined $52 million floor bid under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, subject to higher offers and court approval. The bids followed a three-month marketing process that contacted more than 335 potential buyers, including AI and high-performance computing operators, hyperscalers, REITs and private equity firms, and produced 28 non-disclosure agreements and seven letters of intent.
Poolin was founded in China in 2017 by Zhibiao “Kevin” Pan, Fa Zhu and Tianzhao Li and became the world's largest crypto mining pool by September 2019. Its Poolin Wallet product let users borrow the stablecoin USDT against crypto collateral. After China banned bitcoin mining in 2021 and prices crashed in 2022, Poolin transferred wallet collateral to Antalpha Technologies and borrowed about $213 million against crypto then worth roughly $355.8 million to fund its Texas buildout, equipment purchases and customer withdrawals. Poolin Wallet suspended withdrawals in September 2022, issuing IOU tokens to roughly 11,700 customers holding balances above $100, and Antalpha liquidated the underlying collateral that November when the debt had grown to about $260 million against assets worth around $265 million.
The Texas expansion itself struggled independently of the wallet's collapse. Poolin expected as much as 600 megawatts of power allocation from Texas-New Mexico Power but initially received only 100 MW, leading it to over-order mining equipment that it later sold at a loss of roughly $8.8 million between fiscal 2023 and 2025. A proposed $49 million sale of the Texas business to China Green Agriculture, announced in December 2023, never closed. The debtors said they expect the current auction to produce some distribution for unsecured creditors, including Poolin Wallet customers who have waited nearly four years since their funds were first frozen.