Key Facts

• SBI Crypto's mining pool accounts for roughly 2% of the Bitcoin network's total hashrate, according to data from Hashrateindex.
• The pool will stop accepting mining shares, which represent a miner's contributions in the pool, on the July 31 cutoff date, and shares submitted after that cutoff will not be accepted.
• SBI Crypto operates under SBI Group, the Japanese financial conglomerate, and the mining pool opened to the public in 2021 with SBI saying at the time that it would support the pool with roughly 1.1 EH/s of its own mining power.
• The shutdown notice does not cite a specific reason for the closure, but it occurs amid pressure from falling bitcoin mining margins, volatile hashrate, and rising operational costs, with Bitcoin's price having fallen 50% over the past year from an all-time-high reached in the fall.
• SBI Crypto was also linked to a reported $21 million hack last year, with blockchain investigator ZachXBT pointing to signs similar to North Korean state-backed attacks, although the shutdown notice does not cite the incident as a reason for closing the pool.