The truth behind the collapse of the world’s sixth-largest “LuBian Roadside Mining Pool” is exposed: 127,000 Bitcoins were stolen, now worth US$14.5 billion (untouched in five years)
The LuBian Bitcoin theft worth $14.5 billion has been hidden for nearly five years and has now been officially revealed by Arkham. The 127,426 Bitcoins are still sitting quietly in the wallet.
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Contents of this article
One game is worth 145 The mystery of the $100 million Bitcoin theft has been revealed after nearly five years. On-chain analysis company Arkham Intelligence released a detailed report early this morning (3rd), revealing that at the end of 2020, hackers stole 127,426 Bitcoins from the Chinese mining pool LuBian.
One of the largest thefts in history: 127,426 BTC lost
This is the first time that the incident has been publicly confirmed (neither LuBian nor the hacker publicly acknowledged the hack at the time). Arkham’s analysis of the on-chain footprints shows that the main attack occurred on December 28, 2020. At that time, the unit price of Bitcoin was approximately US$27,500, and the total value stolen was approximately US$35. billion, which has soared to $14.5 billion at current prices.
After this huge amount of funds was transferred out, the wallet address remained dormant for a long time. There was only one internal integration in July 2024, and it has now become the 13th largest Bitcoin holder in the world.
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 (@arkham) August 2, 2025
The private key is too simple and hackers can easily crack it with brute force
The Arkham report pointed out that the weakness of the random function used by LuBian in the private key generation phase is the key to hackers' ability to "brute force crack".
Low entropy is like making the grooves of the entrance lock too regular. As long as the hacker has enough time, he can try each key again. Arkham speculates that the vulnerability is similar to a 32-bit random number issue that appeared in some early parts of the Trust Wallet source code.
On-chain help: 1,516 OP_RETURN messages with no response
After the theft, LuBian did not publicly call the police, but used the Bitcoin OP_RETURN function to try to call the hackers directly. 1,516 small transactions with strings costing a total of approximately 1.4 BTC, containing repeated pleas for the return of funds.
LuBian finally ended mining in early 2021. It is generally believed that in addition to the policy resistance of China and Iran, huge losses were the last straw that crushed the business.
LuBian roadside mining pool entered the market at the end of April 2020 and quickly climbed to become the sixth largest Bitcoin mining pool in the world. At one time, it controlled nearly 6% of the Bitcoin network computing power. Its mining facilities are distributed in China and Iran.
Security revelations and future warnings
The core lesson revealed by the LuBian case is simple: if the private key generation is not strong enough, once it is cracked, it will become a natural disaster-level security black hole. When the value of crypto assets continues to rise, if the industry wants to reassure investors, it must forge invisible security tools into the hardest armor. Otherwise, no matter how big the gains are, it may disappear overnight.
On the other hand, this batch of BTC is still stationary, but there may be the possibility of trading at any time in the future, and the market can always pay attention to its on-chain flow monitoring.
