SBI Crypto is permanently closing its public Bitcoin mining pool. Shares stop being accepted at 22:00 UTC on July 30, 2026 (07:00 JST on July 31), roughly 2% of network hashrate — about 20 EH/s — has to find a new home, and SBI has pointed its miners toward Braiins, Luxor, and NeoPool. This guide covers exactly what to do before the cutoff: drain your balance, repoint your stratum URLs, verify shares on the new pool, and treat the decision as what it really is — a vote on Bitcoin’s decentralization, not just a fee comparison.
Pool shutdowns are rare enough that most home and SMB miners have never had to execute one under a deadline. The mechanics are simple — a pool URL and a worker name — but the details around balances, payout schemes, and backup ordering are where people lose money or hashrate-days. Work through the steps below once, carefully, and the migration takes an evening.
What SBI Crypto announced
On July 3, 2026, SBI Crypto — a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan’s SBI Holdings financial group — announced it will permanently close its public mining pool. The company gave no official reason; the backdrop is a year of compressed mining margins across the industry. The hard numbers:
- Final share acceptance: 22:00 UTC on July 30, 2026 (07:00 JST, July 31). After that, submitted shares are no longer accepted and the pool stops paying for work.
- Scale: the pool carried roughly 2% of network hashrate — reported at about 20,412 PH/s, call it ~20 EH/s.
- Suggested destinations: SBI’s notice pointed miners to Braiins, Luxor, and NeoPool as transition options.
- History: SBI Crypto had been self-mining since 2017 and opened the pool to the public in 2021, paying out on an FPPS model.
We have updated our SBI Crypto Pool glossary entry with the shutdown details, and it will stay live as the historical record after the pool goes dark.
What ~2% of the network moving actually means
Twenty exahash is a lot of machines — on the order of a hundred thousand modern ASICs — and every one of them is about to re-vote on pool concentration. That is the underrated part of this story. When a mid-size pool exits, its hashrate does not evaporate; it flows somewhere, and where it flows changes the shape of the network.
If the bulk of SBI’s miners default to the two or three largest pools — the path of least resistance — the top of the leaderboard gets a little heavier and the number of independent block-template producers shrinks by one. If instead that hashrate spreads across mid-size and smaller pools, the network comes out of this more decentralized than it went in. Our live pool centralization tracker shows the current distribution and will show, in the weeks after July 30, exactly where SBI’s share landed. It is worth checking before you choose a destination: parking your hashrate on a pool that already leads the network is a legitimate choice, but it should be a conscious one.
An institutional exit like this is also a plain reminder of counterparty reality: a pool is a business, and businesses close. Your miner should never depend on any single one of them — which is what failover slots are for, and why the migration below configures more than one pool.
Migrate before the cutoff: step by step
Do these in order. The balance comes first because it is the only step with real money at stake if you procrastinate.
- Withdraw your remaining balance now. Log in to your SBI Crypto pool account, check your unpaid balance, and trigger a payout to a wallet you control — before the July 30 cutoff, not on the last day. Check SBI’s official shutdown notices for how balances below the minimum payout threshold will be handled; do not assume any automatic sweep will happen on your behalf.
- Choose your landing pool(s). Compare the field on fees, payout scheme, minimum payout, Stratum V2 support, and network share — our pool comparison and the full mining pool database put the current numbers side by side. Pick a primary and at least one genuinely independent backup.
- Create the account and worker credentials on the new pool. Register (or, for pools that support it, just prepare a username/wallet-based worker string), note the stratum URL and port for your region, and decide on a worker naming scheme if you run multiple machines.
- Update the pool settings on each miner. In your miner’s web dashboard — stock or third-party firmware, the screen is functionally the same — replace the SBI stratum URL, worker name, and password in Pool 1 with the new pool’s details. Put your independent backup in Pool 2, and a last-resort option in Pool 3. Save and let the miner restart its stratum connection. Remove the SBI entries entirely; a dead pool sitting in a failover slot just adds reconnect delay when you least want it.
- Verify shares are being accepted. Watch the miner’s dashboard for accepted shares climbing and a rejection rate under ~1%, then confirm on the pool’s side that your worker shows up with plausible hashrate. Give it 15–30 minutes; pool-side hashrate estimates lag because they are derived from share submissions.
- Recheck your income expectations against the payout scheme. SBI paid FPPS — smooth, pool-absorbs-variance income. If your new pool uses PPLNS or TIDES, your daily revenue will swing with pool luck and can start low while your share history builds. That is not the pool underpaying you; it is a different variance contract. Our payout scheme reference breaks down FPPS, PPS+, PPLNS, TIDES and the rest, including who carries the risk in each.
Total hands-on time is a few minutes per machine. The thinking time — steps 2 and 6 — is where the guide below earns its keep.
Where the hashrate can go
SBI named three transition options in its notice: Braiins (the operators of the long-running pool formerly known as Slush Pool, and the only major pool with Stratum V2 in production), Luxor (a US-based pool and hashrate-services firm), and NeoPool. All three are credible operators, and there is no catch in SBI’s list — but it is three names out of a much wider field that also includes ocean-going decentralized-template projects, large FPPS incumbents, and solo options for the variance-tolerant.
We deliberately will not crown “the best pool” here, because the right answer depends on your hashrate, your payout-variance tolerance, and how much weight you put on decentralization. Instead, use the tools we maintain for exactly this decision: the pool database for raw specs, the side-by-side comparison for the shortlist, and the how to choose a mining pool in 2026 guide for the decision framework itself.
Pool choice is a decentralization decision
The fee difference between two competent pools is measured in fractions of a percent. The decentralization difference between pointing 20 EH/s at the network’s largest template producer versus spreading it across smaller ones is measured in how much of Bitcoin’s block production sits behind how few doors. Every miner repointing a rig this month is casting that vote whether they think about it or not.
You do not have to be a purist about it. Splitting machines across two pools, choosing a mid-size pool over a giant when the numbers are close, or picking an operator that lets miners build their own block templates — each moves the needle a little. SBI’s exit removes one independent pool from the map; the miners leaving it get to decide whether the map ends up more concentrated or less.
Frequently asked questions
Updated July 9, 2026.
When exactly does SBI Crypto’s pool close?
The pool stops accepting shares at 22:00 UTC on July 30, 2026 — that is 07:00 JST on July 31. The closure was announced on July 3, 2026 and is permanent. Any rig still pointed at SBI after the cutoff is burning electricity for work no one will pay for, so repoint well before the deadline.
What happens to unpaid balances?
Withdraw before the cutoff and treat that as the only path you control. Check SBI’s official shutdown notices for their stated process on remaining and below-minimum balances — we cannot guarantee how, or whether, funds left on the platform after closure will be handled. The safe move is a manual payout to your own wallet now.
Where should the hashrate go?
SBI suggested Braiins, Luxor, and NeoPool, and all three are reasonable landing spots — but the whole field is open to you. Compare fees, payout schemes, and network share in our pool comparison and pool database, check the centralization tracker before adding to the biggest pools, and pick a primary plus an independent backup.
Will my income change on the new pool?
Possibly, even at identical fees. SBI paid FPPS, which smooths income completely. If you move to another FPPS pool, expect similar behaviour; if you move to PPLNS or TIDES, daily revenue will track pool luck and ramps up as your share history builds. See our payout scheme reference for how each model distributes variance and transaction fees.
