Chinese mining pool Lubian has been fingered as the victim of a huge theft in late December 2020, with the platform losing 127,426 BTC. At the time of the theft, the tokens were worth about $3.5 billion, but at today’s prices, they are worth roughly $14.5 billion, making it the biggest crypto theft on record.
The breach was announced by blockchain firm Arkham. Meanwhile, no one at the Chinese mining firm or the group behind the theft has confirmed the breach. LuBian ranked among the top pools in 2020, handling nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s total computing power as of May. Its operations spanned across China and Iran.
Lubian loses $14.5 billion to hackers
On December 28, 2020, attackers emptied over 90 percent of LuBian’s holdings. The next day, roughly $6 million more, which was split between Bitcoin and USDT, vanished from a Lubian address on the Omni protocol. By December 31, LuBian moved its remaining balance into secured recovery wallets. Soon after, each hacker’s address received an embedded OP_RETURN note, begging for the return of stolen funds.
Despite the attack, the Chinese mining pool managed to keep about 11,886 BTC, which is worth around $1.35 billion today and has remained untouched. The hacker has also not interacted with the stolen coins, aside from moving them into a wallet in July 2024. Because Bitcoin’s price has climbed since 2020, the stolen coins now amount to $14.5 billion. On Arkham’s records, that stash places the culprit as the 13th-largest BTC holder, even ahead of the Mt. Gox hacker.
Chinese mining firm exploit surpasses Bybit’s $1.5 billion theft
The Chinese mining firm’s loss shattered the previous record, set by Bybit in February 2025, when it lost $1.5 billion in digital assets to hackers. About $1.46 billion worth of mETH and stETH streamed out to four Ethereum addresses, with parts swapped immediately on decentralized marketplaces.
On-chain investigator ZachXBT spotted the suspicious outflow, and firm Cyvers flagged odd activity from the exchange’s wallets. Bybit had earlier confronted an unrelated “address poisoning” attack. Most of the stolen tokens were swapped for ETH on decentralized exchanges and then run through mixers to hide them. It was one of the first big exchange hacks of 2025.
Bybit said the incident was a routine fund transfer between cold and hot wallets, but that hackers subverted the destination address. No internal breach of systems occurred, according to the company. Investigators had pinpointed five wallets involved in the attack. ZachXBT warned that all other exchanges and services should blacklist these addresses to prevent further losses.
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