- LuBian lost $3.5 billion in a secret Bitcoin heist.
- Hackers exploited weak private keys to drain LuBian’s reserves.
- Stolen Bitcoin remains unmoved as LuBian pleads for return.
A previously undisclosed $3.5 billion Bitcoin heist has come to light, tied to the mysterious disappearance of Chinese mining pool LuBian. Blockchain intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence revealed that 127,426 BTC was drained from LuBian’s reserves in a significant attack in December 2020.
LuBian became one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools in April 2020 and reached the sixth position in a short interval. It has been in the headlines with a dramatic statement on its site that it is the safest, highest-yielding mining pool in the world. Within months of this, the platform decided to shut down unexpectedly in February 2021, with few details known about the reason behind the sudden closure.
The investigation at Arkham now points towards a major hack attack as the cause of LuBian’s sudden exit. On December 28, 2020, it was reported that hackers compromised more than 90 percent of the pool. The following day(the next day), another 6 million dollars worth of Bitcoins and USDT were syphoned off one of its bitcoin Omni wallets.
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LuBian’s Collapse Tied to Suspected Key Vulnerability
Arkham reported that LuBian may have used a flawed algorithm for generating private keys, which could have left wallets open to brute-force attacks. This weakness likely enabled hackers to execute the breach without being detected in time.
The theft was still underway despite its magnitude, and the 11,886 BTC remains under the control of LuBian, who currently has a value of around $1.35 billion. Arkham also responded by saying that the stolen BTC has not been in motion since July 2024, creating more puzzlement about this matter.
LuBian has tried to contact the hacker via OP_RETURN on Bitcoin. There was a trend of messages being placed in two transactions, which referred to the attacker as a white hat and pointed to contacting them to negotiate the recovery of the stolen assets in exchange for a reward. Contact details were included in an email as well, but it is not known whether there ever was a response to that.
Arkham estimated that this event surpassed the worth of other large-scale crypto thefts at the time of the incident. Mt. Gox lost a larger number of BTC back then, but the actual price greatly diminished at the time of its heist, which makes LuBian the largest theft in terms of value during that particular timeframe.
The newly uncovered details around LuBian’s disappearance have raised fresh concerns about key management security in mining operations. With billions of dollars in digital assets at stake, the incident has added urgency to discussions around safeguarding crypto infrastructure.
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