A Bitcoin theft case worth $14.5 billion was unveiled nearly five years later, with the on-chain analysis company Arkham Intelligence releasing a detailed report early this morning, revealing that the Chinese mining pool LuBian was hacked and 127,426 Bitcoins were stolen in late 2020.
One of the Largest Theft Cases in History: 127,426 BTC Lost
This is the first public confirmation of the incident (at the time, neither LuBian nor the hacker publicly acknowledged the hack), and Arkham's on-chain footprint analysis shows that the main attack occurred on December 28, 2020, when the Bitcoin price was around $27,500, with a total theft of approximately $3.5 billion, which has now skyrocketed to $14.5 billion at current prices.
After this massive fund was transferred out, the wallet address remained dormant for a long time, with only one internal consolidation in July 2024, and has now become the 13th largest Bitcoin holder globally.
Private Key Too Simple, Hackers Easily Crack with Brute Force
The Arkham report points out that the weakness in the random function used by LuBian during the private key generation phase was the key to the hacker's "brute force" attack.
Low entropy is like making the key grooves of an entrance lock too regular, and hackers can try every key as long as they have enough time. Arkham speculates that the vulnerability is similar to the 32-bit random number problem that appeared in some early Trust Wallet source code.
On-Chain Rescue: 1,516 OP_RETURN Messages Unanswered
After the theft, LuBian did not publicly report to the police but instead used the Bitcoin OP_RETURN function to try to directly communicate with the hacker. 1,516 small transactions with strings, costing about 1.4 BTC, repeatedly begged for the return of funds.
LuBian ultimately ceased mining in early 2021, and it is widely believed that in addition to policy obstacles from China and Iran, the massive loss was the final straw that broke the business's back.
Security Insights and Future Warnings
The core lesson from the LuBian case is simple: if private key generation is not robust enough, once cracked, it becomes a catastrophic security vulnerability. As the value of crypto assets continues to rise, the industry must forge invisible security tools into the most solid armor to reassure investors, otherwise, even the largest returns could vanish overnight.
On the other hand, this batch of BTC remains stationary today, but there is always a possibility of future transactions, and the market can monitor its on-chain flow at any time.
