US 'steals' $15 billion worth of Bitcoin from Tran Chi.

LuBian used to be one of the largest Bitcoin mining companies. Photo: Elliptic .

In August 2025, blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence announced the suspected theft of 127,426 BTC (worth $3.5 billion at the time) that occurred in December 2020. The victim was LuBian, a Bitcoin mining company with one of the highest mining rates in the world .

Operating in China and Iran, LuBian once controlled nearly 6% of the global Bitcoin mining market. Neither LuBian nor the hackers publicly acknowledged the attack. Arkham was the first to discover and publicize the incident.

The theft targeted a weakness in the algorithm LuBian used to generate encryption keys, which was vulnerable to brute-force attacks. A few days later, LuBian used over $40,000 to send hundreds of transactions to the hacker's wallet, each containing an embedded message: "Please return the money to us, we will reward you."

The "stolen" Bitcoin remained dormant until June 2024, when it was transferred to a new wallet, after which it remained untouched.

On October 14th, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced an indictment charging Chen Zhi, chairman of Prince Group, with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering related to online scams carried out by the group.

The indictment describes how Prince Group laundered money from online scams through a network of legitimate businesses, including cryptocurrency mining operations, generating a large amount of clean BTC unrelated to proceeds from crime. One of these mining businesses was LuBian.

LuBian's stolen cryptocurrency. Photo: Elliptic.

Along with the indictment, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the largest seizure in history, confiscating approximately 127,271 BTC owned by Zhi.

The indictment indicates that this BTC was "stolen" from LuBian in 2021. The file lists 25 BTC wallet addresses, specifying that the seized BTC was previously stored there. These addresses are the LuBian addresses (controlled by Chen) from which the Bitcoin was "stolen".

The DOJ announced it is managing the seized BTC. With a current value of $15 billion , this is the largest seizure ever by the US government . This suggests that the BTC volatility in June and July 2024 may have been a transfer of assets into wallets controlled by the US government.

It remains unclear how this Bitcoin is being stored in the US. It's also unclear who "stole" the BTC from Chen/LuBian, or whether the theft actually occurred. If it did, it's highly likely an opportunistic hacker seized the opportunity to steal LuBian's BTC before being detected by the US government.