China claims the US stole LuBian’s 127,000 Bitcoins, but who actually owns the stash?

Were the 127,000 Bitcoins seized by US investigators actually the proceeds of crime, or did they come from the LuBian mining pool?

Claims from China

In a report expanded by the Global Times and PANews, CVERC accuses the US government of orchestrating the theft of more than 127,000 Bitcoins from the LuBian mining pool in 2020.

At current prices, the value of these Bitcoins is over $13.1 billion, far below Bybit’s $1.5 billion heist in March 2025. At the time of the December 2020 hack, the value of stolen BTC was over $3.5 billion, still higher than the record-breaking Bybit hack.

The funds remained at the attacker’s address for four years until June 2024, before being sent to an address controlled by the United States. PANews sees this as a typical pattern for state-sponsored robberies. Chinese media outlet Global Times reported that CVERC claimed that the incident was a typical argument between thieves. It was reportedly the United States that stole the funds in 2020.

read more: 127,000 Bitcoins went missing in 2020 – no one asked why

The hack itself was discovered by Arkham Intelligence in August 2025. More than that, it was known that the “stolen” assets ended up in a BTC wallet controlled by the US government. However, CVERC first claimed that these Bitcoins were mined legally by LuBian and then stolen by US-backed hackers.

Prior to China’s accusations, cryptocurrency detective ZachXBT had claimed that someone hacked LuBian “on behalf of USG.”

But the United States has a surprisingly different explanation of what happened.

Department of Justice report

Prior to this, in October 2025, the US Department of Justice claimed that a criminal organization called Prince Group, led by Chen Zhi, was behind the hack.

According to the Department of Justice, Price Group was involved in a wire fraud conspiracy and human trafficking. In a press release, the Department of Justice accused Prince Group of defrauding residents of the United States and other countries through a “pig butchering” fraud scheme.

The Justice Department’s indictment directly names LuBian in one of the money laundering operations used by Prince Group. According to the report, only 30% of the funds on LuBian addresses come from Bitcoin mining.

According to CVERC, preliminary findings contradict LuBian’s illicit origins of Bitcoin.

series of events

The timeline of the LuBian Bitcoin seizure may seem confusing as reporting of the incident was delayed for years. The chronological sequence of events is as follows:

April 2020: LuBian mining pool mines the first Bitcoin.

May 2020: LuBain captures 6% share of global hashrate.

December 28, 2020: Unidentified hackers used brute force to steal over 127,000 Bitcoins from LuBian.

July 3, 2022: Someone (presumably a LuBian representative) sent some of the BTC to the alleged attacker address. The sender used OP_RETURN to attach a text message imploring the recipient to return the funds and discuss a possible reward. Several similar messages were sent from 2021 to 2024.

August 2023: The vulnerability in the addresses used by LuBian was mentioned by Milky Sad researchers.

April 2024: Milky Sad claims that LuBian’s private key was created via a pseudo-random number generator. The key is so weak that it can take a gaming computer several days to brute force it.

June 2024: The “stolen” funds were moved to new addresses, where most of them remain today.

October 14, 2025: The Department of Justice has filed criminal charges against Chen Zhi and Price Group, alleging they committed the largest forfeiture in history. The United States has revealed that it has seized over 127,000 BTC from Prince Group.

November 9, 2025: China has accused the United States of stealing LuBian’s Bitcoin at the state level.

Are these Bitcoins from the US?

Immediately after the Department of Justice issued a statement regarding the confiscation of 127,000 BTC, various crypto influencers added this amount to the 198,000 BTC allegedly held by the United States at the time. The amount of 326,000 BTC is consistent with (and mostly based on) Arkham Intelligence’s findings.

Given the lack of publicly available official figures or audits of US holdings, Arkham’s assessment remains the most accurate data circulating on how much BTC the US holds.

However, although President Trump has banned the sale of Bitcoin by the United States, the seized assets typically originate from crimes, and the Justice Department may recommend that the government return these funds to victims.

The Department of Justice has already recommended that the 94,000 BTC stolen from Bitfinex be returned to the exchange. A Justice Department press release quotes Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Attorney General Todd Blanche as saying, “The United States will use all available tools to protect victims and recover stolen assets.”

This means that while the United States likely holds 326,000 Bitcoins, these coins could change hands in the future, even if it intends to refrain from selling its Bitcoins.

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