China Says US Acted Liked A Thief In Record $13.4B Bitcoin Seizure
A Chinese cybersecurity agency accused the US government of participating in a cryptocurrency heist after it seized 127,000 stolen Bitcoin tied to Cambodian businessman Chen Zhi, founder of the Prince Group.
The move marks an escalation in tensions over the biggest crypto seizure in history.
The US Department of Justice last week charged Chen with masterminding a vast cyber-fraud network that ran scam compounds in Cambodia and stole billions in cryptocurrency from victims worldwide.
The US Treasury said it had confiscated about $14 billion worth of Bitcoin linked to Chen.
In response, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) issued a technical report that said the US had taken control of Bitcoin stolen in a 2020 hack on China’s LuBian Mining Pool.
The agency described the case as a “typical instance of thieves falling out,” according to the Global Times, a Chinese state-owned newspaper controlled by the Communist Party of China’s People’s Daily.
The hack was the work of a ”state-level hacking organisation” that the US was involved in, the newspaper said, adding that it took control of the coins under the cover of a “law enforcement seizure.”
The US government says the coins were taken legally because they were proceeds from criminal activity.
Arkham Intelligence Traced The Stolen Bitcoin
Arkham Intelligence previously traced the stolen 127,426 BTC — now worth roughly $13.4 billion — to the LuBian hack, which went unnoticed for years.
The BTC remained dormant, but the stash was transferred to wallets that Arkham labelled as belonging to the US government in the middle of 2024, fueling Beijing’s accusation that Washington disguised the takeover as a law enforcement seizure
Allegedly stolen BTC moved to US government wallet (Source: Arkham)
Neither LuBian nor the suspected hacker has publicly acknowledged the breach. Arkham said it was the first firm to report on the incident.
In 2020, LuBian was one of the largest mining pools globally, and reportedly controlled nearly 6% of the Bitcoin network’s total hashrate in May that year.
Arkham said that more than 90% of LuBian’s BTC holdings were drained on Dec. 28, 2020. There was then another theft of around $6 million in BTC and Tether USDT a couple of days later, the firm added. In response to the hacks, LuBian appears to have moved the remaining 11,886 BTC in its address into recovery wallets by Dec. 31, 2020.
Arkham added that there were OP_RETURN messages sent from LuBian to the hacker. These are special transactions that allow data to be embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain.
According to Arkham, the mining pool spent 1.4 BTC across over 1,500 transactions in an attempt to contact the thief and urge them to return the funds.
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