Exclusive: China’s $14B Bitcoin Mining Pool Heist Revealed as Largest Crypto Hack in History
Breaking: The crypto underworld just crowned its new king of theft—a staggering $14 billion siphoned from a Chinese Bitcoin mining operation. Details emerging today paint this as the most audacious digital heist ever recorded.
How they pulled it off
While forensic teams scramble to trace the attack vectors, early reports suggest the perpetrators exploited multiple layers of infrastructure. The scale suggests either state-level involvement or criminal syndicates upping their game—with some speculating this might finally wake regulators from their perpetual game of whack-a-mole.
Market tremors
The news sent shockwaves through Asian trading sessions, though Bitcoin's price—predictably—barely blinked. Another day, another billion stolen in crypto land. Traders barely paused their leveraged longing before asking when the Fed might cut rates again.
The irony? This theft exceeds the GDP of some nations—all extracted from what mainstream finance still calls 'magic internet money.' Maybe Wall Street's dinosaur funds should take notes—these hackers just outperformed their entire 2025 portfolio in one night.
LuBian Exploit Was the Biggest Crypto Hack in History
LuBian operated mining facilities in China and Iran. In 2020, it controlled almost 6% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate.
Arkham’s on-chain analysis found that over 90% of LuBian’s BTC was drained on December 28, 2020. Additional funds were stolen two days later from a bitcoin Omni Layer address.
Neither LuBian nor the hacker publicly acknowledged the breach. The funds remained dormant until a consolidation event in July 2024.
BREAKING: ARKHAM UNCOVERS $3.5B HEIST – THE LARGEST EVER
LuBian was a Chinese mining pool with facilities in China & Iran. Based on analysis of on-chain data, it appears that 127,426 BTC was stolen from LuBian in December 2020, worth $3.5 billion at the time and now worth… pic.twitter.com/PnIOKgMt0i
Arkham researchers linked multiple addresses used in the theft and observed that each received OP_RETURN messages from LuBian. The pool spent 1.4 BTC across 1,516 transactions to appeal for the stolen funds.
This pattern strongly suggests the hack was real and not spoofed. The hacker has yet to MOVE the stolen BTC again.
Arkham suspects LuBian used a flawed key generation algorithm, which may have exposed its private keys to brute-force attacks. LuBian still holds around 11,886 BTC worth $1.35 billion.
Meanwhile, the hacker’s stash remains untouched, making them the 13th largest BTC holder globally.
This revelation surpasses the previous record—the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025.
Arkham’s disclosure adds new urgency to reviewing key security and crypto infrastructure, especially among legacy mining operations.
