Poolin Files Chapter 11; Owes $163.7M to 11,700 Users

Poolin Technology and two Texas affiliates, Lonestar Taproot LLC and Lonestar Dream Inc., filed voluntary Chapter 11 petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey on July 22. Court filings list about $163.7 million in unsecured IOUs owed to roughly 11,700 wallet users and show the three cases are being jointly administered under case 26-18325.

The Lonestar affiliates have signed stalking-horse agreements with Thor CALAP LLC that provide $15 million for assets at Pyote and $37 million for Tarbush, creating combined opening offers of $52 million for substantially all Texas mining sites, power rights and equipment. Poolin Technology’s estate lists roughly $1.2 million in a New Jersey bank account, an office lease and an intercompany claim; the Texas assets sit with the Lonestar entities.

The wallet IOUs trace to a lending and deposit business that borrowed stablecoins against customers’ crypto and offered deposit products with advertised annual returns of about 2% to 8.8%. When Bitcoin fell below $20,000 in June 2022, pledged collateral fell in value and margin calls followed. Poolin shifted financing to a third-party lender, which liquidated digital-asset collateral in November 2022. By September 2022, Poolin suspended withdrawals and issued roughly $163.7 million in IOUs; filings show about 11,700 wallet holders had balances above $100.

The Lonestar Texas expansion planned for as much as 600 megawatts of power but initially secured about 100 MW, leaving more mining equipment than could be operated. The debtors recorded approximately $8.8 million in equipment-sale losses from fiscal 2023 through 2025 and about $45.9 million in cumulative losses across the Lonestar business. Lonestar Dream closed its Texas mining and hosting operation on July 10 and the filings state it does not intend to resume mining. The Chapter 11 filings describe a wind-down strategy focused on selling sites and related assets.

The debtors reported outreach to more than 335 strategic, financial and hybrid prospects, and filed that marketing produced 28 nondisclosure agreements, seven letters of intent and three additional indications of auction interest. The marketing materials identify potential buyer types including crypto miners and operators of AI or high-performance computing data centers that value powered land, grid interconnections, substations and power rights. The sale motion proposes a schedule that would set an Aug. 12 hearing on bid procedures, a Sept. 8 deadline for qualified offers, a Sept. 10 auction if more than one qualified bid exists, a sale hearing no later than Sept. 16 and a Nov. 30 closing deadline, subject to court approval.

The proposed stalking-horse agreements include bid protections: a 3% breakup fee on each agreement and capped expense reimbursements of up to $250,000 for Tarbush and $150,000 for Pyote. The motion seeks administrative-expense treatment for those protections and proposes transferring existing liens to sale proceeds while preserving lien validity and repayment priority.

Court filings state that sale proceeds would be subject to existing liens, administrative expenses, priority claims, sale costs and the court’s allocation among separate debtor estates. Poolin Technology’s claim against its affiliates and the resolution of liens and allowed claims will affect how value from the Texas assets can flow to unsecured wallet creditors. Filings show no reliable recovery estimate exists until final sale prices, lien resolution, allowed claims and estate allocations are resolved.

Poolin was once one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools, with hashrate rising above 25 exahashes per second in 2021 and 2022 and a peak network share near 18% around 2020. Addresses linked to the pool have mined tens of thousands of blocks and earned hundreds of thousands of bitcoins in block rewards.