Poolin has paused wallet withdrawals with the goal of preserving assets, as well as stabilizing liquidity and operations. The team expects to provide feasible solutions within a week.
Poolin has announced that it will pause all withdrawals from its PoolinWallet as it is facing liquidity problems. It published a blog post on Sept. 5 saying that all withdrawals, flash trades, and internal transfers within Poolin systems will be paused.
It remarked that the goal of this is “preserving assets, stabilizing liquidity, and operations in the midst of the dull crypto market.”
All assets that users have in the wallet are safe. PoolinWallet will offer an update to the community, and should also provide feasible solutions within a week. However, of particular note is the fact that it says that it is continuing to “explore strategic alternatives with various parties.”
To provide some compensation to users, Poolin will offer zero fees for bitcoin and ethereum mining from Sept. 8 through Dec. 7, along with other offers for users with higher pool balances. Those that have more than 1 BTC or 5 ETH in their pool balance will have this promo for one year.
China’s crackdown on BTC mining not stopping
Poolin is based in China, a country where crypto mining has been banned. The company is headquartered in Beijing, and it could be that the mining crackdown has finally caught up with it.
China has shut down several crypto mining operations in the country, which MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor says is a trillion-dollar mistake. However, data from Cambridge University says that a massive underground operation exists.
Poolin partnered with 3AC and BlockFi in the past
Poolin’s hashrate was once more than 10%, but that has now dropped to 6.8%. Foundry USA, AntPool, and F2Pool now have the biggest shares of the hashrate.
Interestingly, Poolin previously worked with the now insolvent Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi, both of which were decimated by the market crash. BlockFi had partnered with Poolin to expand services for crypto miners, while 3AC and Poolin Wallet formed a strategic partnership. Poolin also worked on a DeFi yield farming and bitcoin mining feature, where a token backed by the bitcoin mining hashrate (pETH18C) could be used for yield farming.
It’s unclear what this pausing of withdrawal portends. However, the markets may be on edge given the series of incidents that have taken place over the past few months.