Binance announced on October 13, 2026, that it will permanently shut down Binance Pool, Cloud Mining, Pool Savings, and all related mining services effective November 10, 2026, at 07:00 UTC. The closure ends a six-year operation that began in April 2020, during which Binance Pool mined 22,188 Bit...
Binance announced on October 13, 2026, that it will permanently shut down Binance Pool, Cloud Mining, Pool Savings, and all related mining services effective November 10, 2026, at 07:00 UTC. The closure ends a six-year operation that began in April 2020, during which Binance Pool mined 22,188 Bitcoin blocks and accumulated 137,059 BTC in rewards — approximately $11.4 billion at current prices near $83,400.
The exit marks the largest crypto exchange to abandon mining operations. Binance Pool's network share had fallen from a peak of approximately 13% in November 2022 to under 1% at the time of the announcement, mining just 9 of 1,060 blocks in its final full operating week. The closure follows CoinEx — founded by ViaBTC mining pool — announcing its own full exchange shutdown in September 2026, citing market contraction and compliance costs. Together, the exits signal that the exchange-operated mining pool model, once seen as a natural vertical integration play, has failed to sustain economic viability in the post-halving environment.
Binance disclosed the shutdown on October 13, 2026, giving miners 28 days to redirect equipment. The closure encompasses six distinct services:
| Service | Shutdown Date | Notes | |---|---|---| | Binance Pool (mining connections) | November 10, 07:00 UTC | Stratum endpoints disabled | | Cloud Mining | November 10, 07:00 UTC | All contracts terminated | | Pool Savings | November 10, 07:00 UTC | Positions must be redeemed | | Transaction Accelerator | November 10, 07:00 UTC | No new submissions | | Pool APIs | November 10, 07:00 UTC | Endpoints decommissioned | | Historical data & pool pages | November 24, 2026 | 14-day viewing window |
Users must complete identity verification by 23:59 UTC on November 10 to withdraw remaining balances. Mining records will remain accessible for 14 days after shutdown, through November 24, after which all pool-related pages will be removed.
Binance described the decision as part of an "ongoing review of products and services" and did not cite a specific catalyst. The exchange provided no forward-looking statement about re-entering mining in any form.
Binance Pool launched on April 27, 2020, using a Full Pay-Per-Share (FPPS) payout model focused initially on Bitcoin. The timeline of its rise and decline:
2020 (Launch Year): Entered the market as the eighth-largest Bitcoin mining pool within months. By mid-2020, accumulated approximately 7,000 PH/s (7 EH/s) of hashrate, trailing competitors Huobi Pool and OKEx Pool. Leveraged Binance's existing user base for rapid miner acquisition.
2021–2022 (Peak Period): Reached peak share of approximately 13% of Bitcoin network hashrate in November 2022, placing it among the top five global pools. Benefited from China's mining ban in mid-2021, which reshuffled global hashrate and created opportunities for non-Chinese pools.
2023–2025 (Decline): Market share eroded steadily as dedicated mining operations scaled. By end of 2025, Binance Pool ranked ninth among Bitcoin pools with approximately 26 EH/s, representing just 2.3% of network hashrate, according to Hashrate Index data.
2026 (Final Year): Hashrate fell below 1% of the network. In its final full operating week, Binance Pool found 9 of 1,060 Bitcoin blocks — a 0.85% share. At various points in October, third-party trackers reported the pool's hashrate ranging between 9.1 EH/s and 13 EH/s, depending on measurement window, against a network total of approximately 990–1,000 EH/s.
The cumulative output — 22,188 blocks and 137,059 BTC — represents a substantial operation by any measure. At current prices, the total BTC mined over six years is valued at approximately $11.4 billion, though the actual dollar value realized by miners would depend on the BTC price at the time of each payout.
The Binance Pool closure is not an isolated event. It reflects structural economic forces that have made exchange-operated mining pools uncompetitive:
Post-Halving Revenue Compression. The April 2024 halving cut block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, reducing daily issuance from 900 BTC to 450 BTC. According to Coin Bureau data, average production cost per Bitcoin rose to $37,856 post-halving, with direct production costs at $27,900 and operating breakeven at $37,800. Profitable mining in 2026 requires power rates under $0.08/kWh, sub-15 J/TH ASIC hardware, and reliable uptime. At $0.07/kWh hosting with a Bitcoin price near $83,300, sub-15 J/TH hardware runs margins of 43% to 60%, according to SimpleMining data from September 2026. Exchange-operated pools, which lacked direct control over hosting and hardware, could not compete on these margins.
Scale Disadvantage. Dedicated mining operations — Foundry USA, AntPool, F2Pool — operate with purpose-built infrastructure, long-term power purchase agreements, and proprietary ASIC deployments. Exchange pools aggregated retail and mid-tier miners but could not match the cost structure or operational focus of pure-play mining companies.
The CoinEx Precedent. CoinEx, founded by ViaBTC mining pool operator Haipo Yang, announced its full exchange shutdown on September 15, 2026, with spot trading ending September 29 and withdrawals closing December 22. CoinEx cited "prolonged downturn in the cryptocurrency market, shrinking trading volume and liquidity, and rising regulatory requirements." The exchange offered to buy back its CET tokens at 0.005 USDT each. When the originator of a major mining pool cannot sustain even its exchange business, the vertical integration thesis — that exchanges benefit from operating their own mining pools — is empirically contradicted.
Regulatory Overhead. Both Binance and CoinEx operate under intensifying global compliance regimes. Binance, which entered a $4.3 billion settlement with U.S. authorities in November 2023, has been streamlining non-core services. Mining pool operations require additional regulatory considerations around energy use, hashrate reporting, and transaction processing that add cost without proportional revenue.
Binance Pool's remaining hashrate — estimated at 9–13 EH/s — is modest relative to the approximately 990–1,000 EH/s network total. Its redistribution, however, occurs in an already concentrated landscape.
Current Bitcoin mining pool distribution (7-day average, mid-October 2026):
| Pool | Hashrate Share | Approximate EH/s | |---|---|---| | Foundry USA | ~26–31% | ~260–310 | | AntPool | ~18–20% | ~180–200 | | F2Pool | ~10–16% | ~100–160 | | ViaBTC | ~13% | ~130 | | SpiderPool | ~7% | ~70 | | Others (combined) | ~20% | ~200 |
According to D-Central's H1 2026 mining report, Bitcoin mining's Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) stood at approximately 1,492 — at the boundary between moderate and high concentration, where the Department of Justice considers markets with HHI above 1,500 to be highly concentrated.
The top two pools — Foundry USA and AntPool — together control approximately 44–51% of blocks mined, depending on the measurement period. Adding F2Pool and ViaBTC brings four-pool control to approximately 67–80% of network hashrate.
Bitcoin Core contributor 0xb10c has documented that actual concentration exceeds headline numbers due to proxy pooling — where nominally independent pools route jobs through AntPool's parent company, Bitmain. Several pools that appear independent on block explorers are effectively sub-pools operating under Bitmain's transaction template control.
Three blockchain reorganization events occurred within four weeks in 2026, including a notable incident on September 11 at block height 966,500 involving SpiderPool and AntPool. While all resolved naturally within minutes, they serve as empirical reminders that concentration has operational consequences.
At Foundry USA's approximately 31% share, academic research indicates that selfish mining becomes "unambiguously profitable" — at 25%+ hashrate, the expected return from selfish mining exceeds honest mining under certain propagation-delay assumptions. No evidence of selfish mining has been observed, but the mathematical threshold has been crossed.
Running counter to the concentration trend, the Stratum V2 protocol is gaining adoption. On May 7, 2026, seven major pools joined the Stratum V2 Working Group, collectively representing approximately 75% of global Bitcoin hashrate:
Stratum V2's Job Declaration Protocol shifts transaction selection from pool operators to individual miners. Miners running their own node can construct block templates locally and propose them to the pool, making it harder for any single entity — including the pool operator — to censor transactions.
In June 2026, GoMining and DMND mined what they describe as the first Bitcoin block where the miner selected the block's transactions using Stratum V2's Job Declaration feature. The SRI working group projects that by end of 2026, V2 will be the default protocol for new ASIC firmware shipments, potentially reaching 40–60% of network hashrate.
This represents a structural difference from pool-level concentration: even if Foundry USA controls 31% of hashrate, if individual miners within Foundry's pool select their own transactions via Stratum V2, the pool operator's ability to influence block content is diminished. Concentration of hashrate routing is not identical to concentration of block construction authority, provided Stratum V2 adoption reaches critical mass.
Binance Pool's exit is a data point, not a crisis. Its sub-1% hashrate share means the network absorbs the departure without material disruption. The more significant signal is structural: six years of data demonstrate that exchange-operated mining pools cannot compete with dedicated mining operations on cost, scale, or operational focus.
The Bitcoin mining industry is consolidating around a small number of large, specialized operators. Whether this concentration poses systemic risk depends less on the number of pools and more on the adoption trajectory of Stratum V2, which has the potential to disaggregate block construction authority from hashrate routing. The protocol's projected 40–60% adoption by year-end 2026 will be the critical metric to track.
The network's total hashrate, hovering near 990–1,000 EH/s and approaching the one-zettahash threshold, continues to grow despite the halving. The economic survivors are those who secured cheap power, deployed efficient hardware, and maintained operational discipline. Exchange mining pools, with their diffuse focus and retail-oriented models, were not among them.