SBI Crypto Closing Its Bitcoin Mining Pool After Five Years
Japanese firm SBI Crypto is pulling the plug on its Bitcoin mining pool on July 31, ending a five-year run as a top-15 global operator.
If you've been keeping tabs on who's actually mining Bitcoin, one familiar name is about to disappear from the leaderboard. SBI Crypto, the crypto arm of Japanese financial giant SBI Group, has announced it will shut down its Bitcoin mining pool on July 31 — closing the books on a five-year run in the space.
At its peak, the pool wasn't just a small side project. SBI Crypto ranked 12th globally among Bitcoin mining pools, controlling roughly 2.2% of the total network hashrate. In plain English, that means about 1 in every 45 Bitcoin blocks being mined had SBI Crypto's fingerprints on it. That's a meaningful slice of one of the most competitive industries in crypto.
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Mining pools, for the uninitiated, are groups of miners who combine their computing power to improve their odds of earning block rewards, then split the payout. Running a pool at SBI Crypto's scale requires serious infrastructure, ongoing investment, and the ability to stomach brutal margin pressure whenever Bitcoin's price dips or energy costs spike. Apparently, the math stopped working out in SBI Crypto's favor.
The shutdown is a reminder that even well-capitalized, institutional players aren't immune to the harsh economics of crypto mining. With Bitcoin's April 2024 halving having already slashed block rewards in half, plenty of miners have been quietly reassessing whether staying in the game makes financial sense. SBI Crypto's exit may not be the last high-profile pool closure we see this cycle.
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