🚨 Historic Bitcoin Theft Solved
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham has uncovered one of the largest long-unsolved crypto heists ever.
💵 In December 2020, 127,000 BTC (~$3.5B at the time) were stolen from Chinese mining pool LuBian, which went offline shortly afterward and vanished from the market.
💤 The stolen BTC remained untouched for over 3 years. In mid-2024, quiet movements of the funds triggered a deeper investigation.
🕵️ On August 2, 2025, Arkham publicly revealed that the theft was likely the result of LuBian using a weak key generation method, allowing private keys to be brute-forced.
🔐 In the years that followed the hack, LuBian sent over 1,500 OP_RETURN messages (burning ~1.4 BTC in fees) in a failed attempt to contact the attacker and recover funds.
💻 The exploiter used CoinJoin mixing to obscure transaction history. Arkham has labeled the main wallet as "Lubian Exploiter".
🧭 This address is now among the top 15 largest Bitcoin wallets globally, holding over $14.5B.
🥷 The hacker's identity remains unknown. The case is still under investigation.
Even on a transparent blockchain, it can take years for the truth to surface.