TL;DR:
SBI Crypto is preparing to close its Bitcoin mining pool on July 31, ending a run that lasted more than five years and leaving miners with an oddly understated conclusion to a once-visible corporate mining effort. The crypto-focused division of Japanese financial conglomerate SBI said it will stop accepting mining shares at the same time, but did not explain why. For participating miners, the immediate priority is final accounting, because SBI asked them to keep pointing hashrate to the pool until the last operating day so payouts can be calculated correctly before the cutoff date.
The pool began operating in March 2021, when SBI Crypto entered a field already shaped by major mining operators including Poolin, F2Pool and Binance Pool. Its exit is not marginal in symbolic terms, even if the numbers show a middle-tier footprint. SimpleMining data cited in the report ranked SBI Crypto 12th globally, with about 21.46 exahashes per second and around 2.24% of total Bitcoin network share. By comparison, the hashrate hierarchy remains heavily concentrated, with Foundry USA at about 24.49% and AntPool near 19.05%. That scale makes the closure noteworthy, but not systemically destabilizing overall.
The company is now steering miners toward alternative pool operators as the shutdown approaches, naming Braiins, Luxor and NeoPool among the options. That guidance suggests a practical handoff rather than a disorderly retreat, although the transition still leaves miners to evaluate terms directly with each operator. SBI said some operators may offer special programs or preferential conditions for clients moving from its pool. In that sense, miner migration becomes the operational story, especially because Braiins and Luxor each control roughly 2% to 3% of global hashrate, while NeoPool is not listed among the top-ranked pools.
The shutdown also lands alongside signs that SBI’s crypto agenda is moving beyond mining infrastructure. SBI Holdings recently agreed to acquire full control of crypto exchange Bitbank in a 46.7 billion Japanese yen deal, valued at about $289 million, with the stated aim of creating Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. It has also increased stablecoin activity, backing JPYSC, a trust bank-backed Japanese yen stablecoin, and supporting Ripple’s RLUSD rollout in Japan. Read together, the pool closure looks less like a crypto exit than a sharper reallocation toward exchange and stablecoin rails rather than raw extraction alone.
