In a shocking twist to the crypto industry’s ongoing battle with security, a colossal Bitcoin theft from 2020 has just come to light and it now ranks as the biggest in history.
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has revealed that Chinese mining giant LuBian was the victim of a stealthy cyberattack that drained a jaw-dropping 127,426 BTC from its wallets. Back then, the loot was worth around $3.5 billion. Fast-forward to today, and the value of the stolen Bitcoin has skyrocketed to nearly $15 billion and here’s the wild part: the hacker still holds almost all of it.
A Hack Hidden in Plain Sight
LuBian wasn’t just any mining pool. At its peak in 2020, it accounted for nearly 6% of the entire Bitcoin network’s hash rate, with mining facilities across China and Iran. But around December 28, 2020, something catastrophic happened behind closed doors: an attacker quietly exploited a vulnerability in LuBian’s system, gaining access to its wallets and siphoning off almost all of its BTC holdings.
The scale of the attack was massive. Within two days, over 127,000 BTC was stolen, followed by another $6 million worth of BTC and USDT from a related address. Yet remarkably, there was no public announcement, no outcry just silence. Neither LuBian nor the hacker disclosed the breach, letting it go unnoticed for over four years.
How It Happened
Arkham’s analysis suggests that LuBian may have been using a flawed private key generation method, one that left it vulnerable to brute-force attacks. Once inside, the hacker swept up nearly all of the pool’s assets before LuBian even knew what hit them.
By December 31, LuBian scrambled to protect what little it had left. The team moved remaining funds about 11,886 BTC into safer recovery wallets and even tried to communicate with the hacker using Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN feature. Over 1,500 blockchain transactions, costing 1.4 BTC, carried messages pleading for the return of the stolen funds. But the hacker never responded.
The stolen BTC has mostly remained untouched for years, with the only notable movement being a wallet consolidation in July 2024. Today, that address ranks among the largest BTC holders ever even surpassing the infamous Mt. Gox hacker from 2011.
Industry Under Pressure
Crypto hacks are nothing new, but this one sets a new bar. And it’s a sobering reminder of how outdated security practices can have catastrophic consequences. In 2024 alone, the crypto space has lost more than $3.1 billion to breaches, protocol exploits, and phishing scams. As hackers grow smarter, the industry is under increasing pressure to step up its security game.
This $15 billion theft may have stayed in the shadows for years, but now that it’s been exposed, it serves as a powerful wake-up call: in crypto, silence doesn’t always mean safety.
