It is reported that the computing power allocated to Binance Pool has decreased from 26 EH /s in December last year to about 9 EH /s. The remaining miners must choose another service provider by November 10th.

The computing power of Binance Pool has declined by about 65% since December last year, to approximately 9.2 million terahashes per second (9.2 exahashes per second), accounting for less than 1% of the Bitcoin network's total computing power.

This closure, following the withdrawal of other industries, may further concentrate blockchain production in the hands of Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool; these three collectively control approximately 64% of the network's computing power.

The crypto exchange Binance is shutting down its Bitcoin mining pool, which was launched in April 2020. The computing power of this service has decreased by nearly two-thirds since the end of last year.

One exahash per second is equivalent to making one quadrillion guesses per second for the puzzle that wins a Bitcoin block. Mining pools bring together the work of multiple machines, allowing their owners to receive payments regularly, rather than waiting to find a block on their own.

The mining pool page will be permanently removed on November 24th. Customers will still have two weeks to download their records and check the payment status by then.

Four years ago, Binance also provided expansion financing to miners. In October 2022, the company announced a $500 million loan program through that mining pool, offering secured loans with terms ranging from 18 to 24 months and interest rates from 5% to 10%. The closure notice did not mention this program, nor did it disclose any outstanding loan balances.

Fewer pools to choose from

After Binance, SBI Crypto also shut down its mining pool on July 31, which at that time accounted for about 2% of the Bitcoin computing power. The crypto exchange OKX ended its mining pool services in February 2024.

A report from Hashrate Index in December last year stated that Binance Pool is the last surviving mining pool left over from the exchange's expansion into the mining sector.

Extended Reading: SBI Crypto Will Shut Down Mining Pools That Account for Approximately 2% of Bitcoin's Computing Power

Poolin used to be the largest mining pool in the world, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the global computing power at its peak. However, due to debts of about $173 million, it filed for bankruptcy in July. Its difficulties included frozen wallet funds and stalled mining facilities in Texas, and its share in the mining pool has been close to zero for many years.

Traditional pool operators decide which transactions the machines participating in the pool will confirm. Therefore, when a pool shuts down, it reduces the range of service providers that miners can choose from, and this affects which Bitcoin payments are included in blocks. However, miners can still switch their machines to smaller-scale service providers; pool shares do not represent ownership of the hardware.