BREAKING: Arkham Exposes $3.5B Bitcoin Heist from Chinese Mining Pool—Largest Crypto Theft in History (2020)
Five years later, the blockchain never forgets.
The $3.5B blind spot: Arkham Intelligence just ripped the lid off the biggest crypto heist nobody talked about—until now. A Chinese mining pool got cleaned out in 2020 while traditional finance was still arguing about "whether Bitcoin was real."
How it happened: No fancy smart contract exploits here. Just old-fashioned digital burglary at a scale that'd make central bank printers blush. The thieves walked away with enough BTC to buy a small country—assuming they can ever cash out.
Why it matters today: That stolen stash is still out there. Watch for sudden OTC moves or mixing attempts as chain analysis gets sharper. Meanwhile, Wall Street still can't decide if crypto needs "more regulation" or "less innovation."
Funny how the "unhackable" asset class keeps getting hacked... while the real crime remains the 7% inflation eating your 401(k).
LuBian Vanished in 2021, Sparking Speculation of Shutdown
By February 2021, LuBian had disappeared without explanation, fueling speculation that it was either shut down by authorities or quietly converted into a private pool.
Arkham’s investigation points to a more dramatic exit: a hack that drained the pool’s holdings.
“They appear to have been first hacked on December 28th, 2020 for over 90% of their BTC,” Arkham wrote.
The following day, attackers siphoned off another $6 million in BTC and USDT from a LuBian-linked address on the Bitcoin Omni layer.
The firm believes the Bitcoin theft stemmed from vulnerabilities in LuBian’s private key generation system, which may have allowed brute-force attacks.
While 11,886 BTC, worth roughly $1.35 billion, remains untouched in LuBian’s wallet, none of the stolen coins have moved since July 2024.
Interestingly, LuBian attempted to communicate with the attacker using Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN feature.
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
In two transactions, the team wrote: “To the whitehat who is saving our asset, you can contact us… to discuss the return of asset and your reward.”
The message included an email address, but it’s unclear if the hacker ever replied.
While the Mt. Gox collapse involved more BTC, the LuBian breach is the largest confirmed crypto theft by value at the time of the incident.
Bitcoin Hacks, Theft Cost Investors $2.2B in H1 2025: CertiK
Crypto investors lost over $2.2 billion to hacks, scams, and breaches in the first half of 2025, driven largely by wallet compromises and phishing attacks, according to CertiK’s latest security report.
Wallet breaches alone caused $1.7 billion in losses across just 34 incidents, while phishing scams accounted for over $410 million across 132 attacks.
Two major incidents, including Bybit’s $1.5 billion hack in February and Cetus Protocol’s $225 million exploit in May, skewed the year’s losses upward, together accounting for nearly $1.78 billion.
Without these, losses align more closely with previous years at around $690 million.
Ethereum remained the primary target, suffering over $1.6 billion in losses across 175 events.
The report also pointed to rising sophistication of phishing schemes and ongoing risks from social engineering, urging crypto users to verify links, avoid suspicious sites, and use hardware wallets.
