Wallets cracked, billions stolen, no one arrested. The crypto world’s biggest mystery just got blown wide open.
The 2020 LuBian Bitcoin heist has been revealed as the largest hack in crypto history, with 127,426 BTC stolen, worth approximately $14.5 billion at the time of writing.mining pool, was the victim of a colossal hack back in December 2020, which saw 127,426 BTC vanish without a trace.
At the time, the stolen coins were worth $3.5 billion, which is an absurdly high amount to begin with. But with Bitcoin’s meteoric rise in the following years, the coins’ value soared to a staggering $14.5 billion, officially marking it as the largest crypto heist in history.Arkham Intelligence uncovered that hackers breached LuBian, which was once the sixth-largest Bitcoin mining pool, on the 28th of December 2020, and stole approximately 127,426 BTC. Yet for years, neither LuBian nor the attacker disclosed the incident, keeping it entirely under wraps. In fact, hackers reportedly drained about 90% of LuBian’s funds before the pool managed to secure the remaining 11,886 BTC in recovery wallets, dealing a massive hit to the pool’s treasury. But, it didn’t stop there. The next day, the breach further escalated, with another $6 million in BTC and USDT going out of LuBian’s wallets. In an attempt to negotiate, LuBian spent 1.4 BTC across 1,516 transactions to send messages to hackers, pleading with them to return the stolen funds and offering a reward, but their attempts were to no avail. Arkham traced the exploit back to weak private key generation, which likely made LuBian’s wallets susceptible to brute-force attacks.Though unlike ByBit, whose loss was traced back to a compromised developer machine, LuBian’s vulnerability reportedly stemmed from flawed Trust Wallet code that relied on weak 32-bit entropy, a method already exploited in past wallet breaches. Remarkably, the hacker has left the stolen Bitcoin untouched, consolidating it into a single wallet as recently as July 2024. At $14.5 billion in value, the stash makes the perpetrator the 13th-largest BTC holder, ranking above even the infamous Mt. Gox hacker. The scale of the LuBian exploit reflects not only critical gaps in wallet security, but also how such breaches can send shockwaves across the industry. At the same time, less technically sophisticated scams are also taking place across the ecosystem, impacting smaller retail players as well. Therefore, as scrutiny intensifies across both corporate and individual actors in crypto, the LuBian incident stands as a stark reminder of the ecosystem’s fragility, both technical and reputational.Ishika Kumari is a Crypto Analyst and Content Strategist at AMBCrypto, specializing in the analysis of cryptocurrency regulations, market trends, and the socio-political impact of blockchain technology. Her expertise is grounded in her academic background as a graduate of Political Science from the renowned University of Delhi. This discipline has equipped her with a sophisticated framework for analyzing complex governance models, international regulatory landscapes, and the economic principles that underpin decentralized systems. At AMBCrypto, Ishika applies this unique analytical lens to her work. She excels at breaking down intricate subjects—from the technicalities of new protocols to the nuances of global crypto legislation—into clear, accessible, and insightful content. Her primary mission is to bridge the gap between the complexity of the digital asset industry and the everyday reader, ensuring that AMBCrypto's audience is not just informed, but truly understands the forces shaping the future of finance.Subscribe to get it daily in your inbox.
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