- A crypto wallet linked to **LuBian Mining Pool** lost over 127,000 Bitcoin in December 2020, marking the largest known bitcoin theft.
- **Arkham Intelligence** reports the stolen bitcoin was worth $3.5 billion at the time and is now valued at $14.5 billion.
- The breach was not publicly acknowledged by **LuBian** or the alleged Hacker and was only recently uncovered.
- Evidence shows **LuBian** sent over 1,500 blockchain messages to the thief, pleading for the funds’ return.
- A flawed private key system is likely to blame, and the stolen bitcoin remains mostly untouched, placing the hacker’s wallet among the top 15 largest bitcoin holders.
A bitcoin wallet tied to the Chinese-based LuBian Mining Pool was hit by what’s believed to be the biggest crypto theft ever recorded, according to findings by Arkham Intelligence. The onchain analytics company reports that 127,426 bitcoin—worth about $3.5 billion in December 2020—were stolen from LuBian over several days at the end of that year.
LuBian was one of the leading mining pools in 2020, responsible for nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s total mining power as of May that year. Arkham Intelligence said it is the first to publicly confirm the breach, which neither the mining pool nor the alleged thief has acknowledged. The theft exceeded the scale of earlier incidents like Mt. Gox and Bitfinex in terms of the nominal value lost at the time.
Arkham’s analysis found the security breach began on December 28, 2020, when more than 90% of LuBian’s bitcoin holdings were drained. Just two days later, another loss occurred involving $6 million in bitcoin and stablecoins from an address linked to LuBian on the Bitcoin Omni layer. By the end of the month, LuBian appeared to have moved its remaining 11,886 bitcoin into recovery wallets.
A standout detail in Arkham’s report was the use of OP_RETURN messages—which let users write data into the Bitcoin blockchain. Over 1,500 such messages were sent from LuBian to the hacker, requesting the return of funds and spending around 1.4 bitcoin in transaction fees. According to Arkham, this effort is clear evidence these messages came from the legitimate wallet holder.
The investigation points to a vulnerable private key generation system at LuBian, which could have made the wallets susceptible to brute-force attacks; this makes it possible for Hackers to guess or calculate the keys. Arkham reported that nearly all of the stolen bitcoin has remained “largely dormant.” The most notable movement was a consolidation of these funds into one wallet in July 2024.
Rising bitcoin prices mean that the stolen assets are now valued at about $14.5 billion. That makes the hacker’s wallet the 13th largest tracked by Arkham Intelligence, surpassing the amount taken from the Mt. Gox breach. The identities of both the hacker and the wallet owner remain unknown, and Arkham has published trackers for the addresses involved.
For more, see Arkham’s full analysis in their social media thread.
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