Binance’s bitcoin mining pool reached its shutdown deadline at 07:00 UTC on Tuesday, ending a service the exchange has run since April 2020. By the time the cutoff came, Binance Pool had barely been finding blocks at all: its last one, according to mempool.space, was block 974,743 on Nov. 6, 528 blocks before the switch-off.
What Binance said it would switch off
Binance set the date in a notice published on Oct. 13, citing only an “ongoing review of products and services.” The closure covers more than the pool. Pool Savings, Cloud Mining and the Transaction Accelerator go with it, along with Telegram hashrate alerts, email notifications and the mining pool API.
At the cutoff, Binance said, the pool would begin disconnecting miners and disable its Stratum URLs and mining endpoints, the addresses that mining machines point at to receive work. Shares submitted after that point “will no longer be accepted, processed, or credited.” Shares sent before the deadline go into a final reward calculation under the pool’s usual rules.
Two more dates matter for customers. Binance asked anyone owed rewards, refunds or settlements to finish any required identity checks by 23:59 UTC on Tuesday so payouts can be processed, though it gave no payout date and said settlements remain subject to account status, risk controls and compliance checks. Binance Pool pages stay open for historical data and payout status until Nov. 24, after which the exchange says they will be permanently inaccessible. Binance had not posted a separate update on the closure on its main X account by Tuesday morning.
A pool that had already emptied out
The blockchain data shows how little was left to switch off. Binance Pool mined one of the 906 blocks found over the past seven days, a share of about 0.11%, according to mempool.space’s pool statistics. Over the past month it found 31 of 4,534 blocks, or 0.68%, which put it 12th among identified pools. Over three months the figure was 176 blocks, about 1.3%, and over a full year it was 1,005 blocks, about 1.9%, good for 10th place.
Its final block, mined at 01:15 UTC on Nov. 6, held 1,353 transactions and paid about 3.134 BTC, of which less than 0.01 BTC came from fees. Mempool.space credits the pool with 22,213 blocks in total and about 137,138 BTC in block rewards over its lifetime.
The decline started well before the closure notice. Binance Pool had about 26 exahashes per second (EH/s) of computing power in December, roughly 2.3% of the network, and about 9.2 EH/s by mid-October, CoinDesk reported, citing Hashrate Index. That is a fall of about 65%. Mempool.space currently estimates total network hashrate at about 947 EH/s.
A caution applies to the weekly figure. Block discovery is random, and a pool with a small share of hashrate can go days without a block through bad luck alone, a point CoinDesk also made on Monday. One block in a week shows the pool was small, not exactly how small.
Where the hashrate goes
Miners who were still connected do not need to switch their machines off. Moving to another pool is a change of Stratum address in the miner settings, and Binance’s notice told users to do that before the deadline. Binance has not said where its remaining customers went, and pool attribution data will take days to show any shift.
The concern for bitcoin’s structure is concentration. Over the past month, Foundry USA found 25.7% of blocks, AntPool 20.4% and F2Pool 16.5%, according to mempool.space, a combined 62.6% for the top three. A pool that had fallen below 1% of blocks does not change that picture much on its own, but each exit by a mid-sized operator leaves fewer large alternatives. New pools do still appear. Oman, for example, launched a state-backed pool in June that licensed miners there must use.
Why the timing draws attention
The closure was announced on Oct. 13, more than two weeks before the Oct. 29 attack on Binance’s hot wallets, so the two are not linked in anything Binance has said. Still, it lands while the exchange is rebuilding after that incident, which it said involved roughly $6.3 billion in stolen tokens and which it has been covering from its SAFU fund and its own treasury. It is also not the first product Binance has retired this year: the exchange shut its NFT service in July, Decrypt noted.
The next markers are the final payouts and the Nov. 24 closure of the pool pages. Miners waiting on settlements will want to download their records before then.
FAQ
When did Binance Pool shut down?
Binance set the cutoff for 07:00 UTC on Nov. 10, 2026. Shares submitted after that time are not credited, and Pool Savings, Cloud Mining and the Transaction Accelerator end at the same time.
Will Binance Pool users still get paid?
Binance says eligible outstanding rewards, balances and refunds will be processed after the cutoff, subject to product rules and compliance checks. It asked users to complete any identity verification by 23:59 UTC on Nov. 10 and has not given a payout date.
How big was Binance Pool at the end?
Small. It found one of 906 blocks over the past week and 31 of 4,534 over the past month, according to mempool.space, compared with about 1.9% of blocks over the past year.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
