Poolin Founder Sells Texas Bitcoin Mining Sites for $49 Million

Zhibiao (Kevin) Pan, the founder and CEO of mining pool Poolin, is selling his other bitcoin mining and hosting venture in Texas dubbed Lonestar Dream for $49 million to Chinese Green Agriculture (CGA).

CGA is an NYSE-listed Chinese producer and distributor of humic acid-based compound fertilizers with a market capitalization of $40 million. On Dec. 27, it announced a stock purchase agreement to acquire Lonestar Dream, of which Pan is the sole shareholder, for a consideration of $49 million.

On Mar. 20, CGA said in a follow-up statement that it was entering the bitcoin mining space via the acquisition of Lonestar Dream, which operates two sites in Texas with a total capacity of 100 megawatts (MW) for proprietary mining and colocation.

CGA said the initial payment of $2.45 million is due at the closing of the transaction, and $44.1 million will be due 90 business days afterward subject to the satisfaction of certain conditions. The remaining $2.45 million will be due within 20 days after Lonestar’s auditor completes a financial audit for 2023.

It is unclear whether or how Pan will be using the proceeds from the sale to resolve the liquidity issue of Poolin, which has halted crypto withdrawals since September 2022.

Once a top three bitcoin mining pool based in China, Poolin rolled out a Mars Protocol project to sell bitcoin hashrate tokens in 2021 to raise funds for expansion, only to see the plan disrupted by China’s mining ban in 2021. It spent the next year building infrastructure in Texas and relocating miners to the U.S. but ran into liquidity issues as the market turned bearish.

In its most recent update on Dec. 8, Poolin said it is “optimistic” that a formal restructuring plan will be initiated in Q1, 2024.

Poolin currently has about 6 EH/s of hashrate connected to its pool. Genesis Digital Assets, a privately owned bitcoin mining firm, said on Wednesday that it entered into a colocation agreement with Lonestar Dream to host 1 EH/s of its miners at the firm’s site in Pecos County with a power draw of 36 MW.