Arkham Says $3.5B LuBian Bitcoin Theft Went Undetected for Nearly Five Years
Arkham Intelligence, an on-chain analytics firm, recently revealed evidence suggesting the largest Bitcoin theft in history may have occurred in late December 2020. Their findings point to LuBian Mining Pool, a significant player in the Bitcoin mining landscape at the time, as the victim. Approximately 127,426 BTC, valued at $3.5 billion then and now estimated at $14.5 billion due to Bitcoin’s price appreciation, was reportedly stolen.
This previously unreported incident surpasses the losses of notorious hacks like Mt. Gox and Bitfinex in nominal value at the time of the theft. Arkham’s analysis shows that on December 28th, 2020, over 90% of LuBian’s Bitcoin holdings vanished. Two days later, a smaller theft of approximately $6 million in Bitcoin and Tether (USDT) occurred, linked to a LuBian address on the Bitcoin Omni layer. By December 31st, 2020, LuBian had moved its remaining 11,886 BTC to recovery wallets.
Intriguingly, Arkham discovered over 1,500 transactions from LuBian to the suspected hacker’s address, using OP_RETURN messages – a feature allowing data embedding within Bitcoin transactions – to plead for the stolen funds’ return. This suggests the messages were genuine attempts at recovery by LuBian.
Arkham hypothesizes that a flawed private key generation algorithm used by LuBian may have created a vulnerability exploitable through brute-force attacks. The stolen Bitcoin has remained largely inactive since then, with the most recent significant movement being a wallet consolidation in July 2024.
The hacker’s wallet, now holding a significant portion of the stolen Bitcoin, ranks as the 13th largest BTC holder tracked by Arkham, exceeding even the holdings linked to the Mt. Gox breach. Neither LuBian nor the alleged hacker has publicly acknowledged the incident, and their identities remain undisclosed, though Arkham has published wallet trackers for both. The lack of public acknowledgement and the substantial value of the stolen Bitcoin make this a significant event in cryptocurrency history.
