127426 BTC Worth $14.5 Billion Hacked: Arkahm Unveils the Largest Bitcoin Heist in History

Largest Crypto heist

Key Insights

• 127,426 BTC worth $14.5 billion hacked from Lubian

• LuBian, a Chinese mining pool that was exploited for $3.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in 2020, now holds only 11,886 BTC worth $1.35 billion.

Over the last years, crypto has boomed, so have hacking incidents as reported earlier by EMCryptohub.

In significant, shocking News, Arham Intelligence unveiled the largest Crypto heist in history. For the first time, details have emerged about a Chinese mining pool called Lubian. According to Onchain analysis, LuBian was hacked for 127,426 BTC. 

127426 BTC worth $14.5 billion hacked

According to Arkham, Lubian's 127,426 BTC was stolen in December 2020, worth $3.5 billion at the time and now worth approximately $14.5 billion. Despite the incident nearly five years ago, neither LuBian nor the hacker has publicly acknowledged the hack. The details of the hack have now come to light following Arkham's investigation—127426 BTC worth $14.5 billion hacked.

Before the hack in 2020, LuBian was one of the world's largest mining pools, controlling almost 6% of the Bitcoin network's total hash rate as of May 2020. This changed a few months later, according to on-chain data. On December 28th, the firm was hacked and over 90% of their BTC was stolen. A day later, the hacker returned and took $6M of additional BTC & USDT from a Lubian address active on the Bitcoin Omni layer. After the looting spree, Lubian took security measures and rotated its remaining funds to recovery wallets. 

How LuBian attempted to salvage 

After the hacking incident, Lubian did not sit idle but made strategic moves to persuade hackers to return the loot. 

According to the report, each hacker address received the OP_RETURN message, in which LuBian called up the hacker to return their funds. In the process, LuBian spent 1.4 BTC across 1516 different transactions to send these messages. Such a massive number of messages suggests that it was not a spoof from another hacker. 

How Lubian was Doomed

In most cases, when companies are hacked, they tend to make significant mistakes that lead to vulnerability. 

In LuBian's case, it appears that LuBian was using an algorithm to generate its private keys that was susceptible to brute-force attacks. This may have been the vulnerability exploited by the hackers.

How is it holding now? 

After the hack incident, Lubian went silent, and it appears to have also closed down its operation. Since then, the company has not added any BTC, signaling a lack of any activity.

However, since the whole amount was not stolen, LuBian preserved 11,886 BTC, currently worth $1.35B, which they still hold. On the side of hackers,  the hacker also still has the stolen BTC, with their last known movement being a wallet consolidation in July 2024. With $3.5B in stolen assets at the time of transfer, the LuBian hack is the largest ever.

Since Bitcoin has appreciated massively since 2020, the loot has now grown massively. Now, the 127,426 BTC hacked from Lubian is worth $14.5 billion. This makes the LuBian hacker the 13th largest BTC holder on Arkham, ahead of the Mt. Gox Hacker. Until now, the hacking incident has remained underwater since those affected did not disclose it.