In December 2020, 127,426 Bitcoins were stolen from the Chinese mining pool LuBian, worth 3.5 billion dollars at the time, and today their value has reached 14.5 billion dollars due to the rise in Bitcoin's price! 💰🚀
LuBian Hack: The largest in the crypto world
LuBian was operating mining operations in China and Iran, controlling about 6% of the total Bitcoin mining power (hash rate). ⚡️⛏️
More than 90% of their Bitcoins were stolen on December 28, 2020, with additional theft two days later from an address linked to Omni Layer technology.
The stolen funds remained stagnant until July 2024, then they were consolidated in one place. 🔒📅
Arkham's research revealed distress messages from LuBian through thousands of transactions urging the retrieval of the stolen funds. 📩🔍
It is believed that the reason is a weakness in the private key generation algorithm, which allowed hackers to access the keys through a brute force attack. 🗝️⚔️
LuBian still holds about 11,886 Bitcoins (worth 1.35 billion dollars). 💼
As for the hackers, they did not move their stolen funds, making them now some of the largest Bitcoin holders in the world! 🌍💎
This hack surpasses the Bybit record of 1.5 billion dollars in February 2025. 📉🔥
🔐 This revelation highlights the need to update and protect mining systems and digital currency infrastructure, especially the older ones.