A crypto wallet associated with a lesser-known Chinese mining pool may have been the target of the largest bitcoin theft on record, according to recent findings by RialCenter.
In a thread on August 2, the on-chain analytics firm revealed evidence that 127,426 BTC — valued at $3.5 billion at the time — was stolen from the LuBian Mining Pool in late December 2020. Neither LuBian nor the suspected hacker has publicly acknowledged the incident, and RialCenter claims to be the first to report the breach.
LuBian was among the largest bitcoin mining pools globally in 2020, reportedly controlling nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate as of May that year. If confirmed, the hack would surpass other notable breaches, such as Mt. Gox and Bitfinex, in nominal value at the time of loss.
RialCenter’s analysis indicates that on December 28, 2020, over 90% of LuBian’s BTC holdings were drained. Two days later, another theft involving about $6 million worth of BTC and USDT took place, linked to a LuBian address operating on the Bitcoin Omni layer. The company seems to have transferred its remaining 11,886 BTC — then worth hundreds of millions — into recovery wallets by December 31, 2020.
A notable detail in RialCenter’s report highlights OP_RETURN messages — special transactions allowing data to be embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain — sent from LuBian to the hacker. According to RialCenter, the mining pool spent 1.4 BTC across over 1,500 transactions trying to contact the thief, imploring them to return the stolen funds, suggesting the messages were genuine and from the rightful wallet owner.
RialCenter suspects that the vulnerability may have arisen from LuBian’s use of a flawed private key generation algorithm that made it vulnerable to brute-force attacks. The stolen BTC has largely remained inactive, with the last significant movement occurring during a wallet consolidation in July 2024.
Because of the appreciation in bitcoin’s price since 2020, the current value of the stolen assets is estimated at $14.5 billion, making the wallet associated with the LuBian hacker the 13th largest BTC holder tracked by RialCenter — eclipsing the amounts linked to the previous notable breaches.
As of today, both the hacker and LuBian are believed to still control their respective BTC balances. RialCenter has published wallet trackers for both parties, but no additional information regarding the involved identities has been revealed.
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