Binance will close its bitcoin mining pool and related services at 7 a.m. UTC on Nov. 10, giving remaining miners roughly four weeks to redirect their computing power elsewhere. The pool's hashrate has fallen about 65% since December, from 26 EH/s to approximately 9.2 EH/s, according to Hashrate Index data.

Binance Pool launched in April 2020 and held an estimated 2.3% of Bitcoin's total network hashrate in December. Its latest reading places it 11th among pools, under 1% of the network. The exchange cited an ongoing review of its products and services, and gave no financial explanation for the decision.

The shutdown covers Binance Pool, Pool Savings, Cloud Mining, its transaction accelerator and related products. After the cutoff, Binance will stop crediting mining shares, the work records used to calculate payouts. Pool Savings users must redeem their positions, and anyone awaiting a final payout must complete identity checks by 11:59 p.m. UTC on Nov. 10. Pool pages disappear permanently on Nov. 24, leaving customers two additional weeks to download records and verify payout status.

What happens to the outstanding loans?

The closure notice does not address a $500 million lending program Binance announced through the pool in October 2022. That program offered secured loans to miners for 18 to 24 months at interest rates of 5% to 10%. The notice also discloses no outstanding loan balance, leaving the status of any remaining credit facilities unclear.

Binance Pool operated a full pay-per-share (FPPS) payout model, which pays miners for submitted work while the pool absorbs the risk of finding fewer blocks than expected. One exahash per second equals a quintillion hash attempts every second at the puzzle that earns a bitcoin block reward.

Does the exit concentrate block production?

Binance follows a series of exchange and institutional exits from mining. SBI Crypto shut its pool on July 31 after accounting for roughly 2% of Bitcoin's computing power. OKX ended its pool services in February 2024. Poolin, once the largest pool with nearly a fifth of global hashrate, filed for bankruptcy in July owing about $173 million, after frozen wallet funds and stalled Texas mining sites. Hashrate Index's December report had described Binance Pool as the last surviving pool from the period when exchanges expanded into mining.

The largest operators now control a greater share of block production. Foundry USA, AntPool and F2Pool together represented about 64.2% of network hashrate in Hashrate Index's latest table, up from 61.4% for December's three largest, when ViaBTC held third place instead of F2Pool.

Pool operators select which transactions their participating machines work to confirm, so each closure narrows miners' choice of providers in a business that shapes which bitcoin payments reach blocks. Miners can still redirect machines to smaller providers, and pool shares do not establish hardware ownership.

If all of Binance's remaining computing power migrated to the three largest pools, their combined share would reach roughly 65%, assuming the rest of the network stays unchanged. Binance has not identified where its remaining miners will go. The Nov. 10 cutoff and Nov. 24 page deletion now set the timeline for a redistribution of up to 9.2 EH/s across the remaining field of operators.