According to the new findings of Arkham Intelligence, a Crypto wallet tied to a small known Chinese mining pool may be the biggest bitcoin theft recorded so far.
In August 1 Thread On X, Onchain Analytics firm said it had highlighted the evidence that 127,426 BTC – at that time priced at $ 3.5 billion – was stolen from Lubian mining pool in late December 2020. Neither Lubian nor suspected hacker has ever publicly accepted Breach, and Arkham said that it is the first.
Lubian was one of the largest bitcoin mining pools globally in 2020, allegedly controlled by about 6% of the total hash rate of bitcoin by May that year. Hack, if confirmed, will receive the scale of other high-profile adventures such as Mount Goks and Bitfinex by nominal value at the time of loss.
Arakham analysis indicates that on December 28, 2020, Lubian’s BTC holdings had more than 90% drought. Two days later, BTC and USDT were another theft of about $ 6 million, which was associated with a Lubian address working on the bitcoin omni layer. The company has transferred the remaining 11,886 BTC – then the price of hundreds of millions in the recovery wallet by December 31, 2020.
A remarkable details in the Arakham report are the presence of OP_RETURN messages – special transactions that allow the data to be embedded in bitcoin blockchain – sent from Lubian to the hacker. According to Arkham, the mining pool spent 1.4 BTC in more than 1,500 transactions, which tried to contact the thief, urged them to return the stolen funds. This effort shows that the messages were real and originated from the owner of the right wallet.
Arakham believes that the vulnerability may stems from the use of a flawful private key generation algorithm of Lubian which left it susceptible to cruel-bomb attacks. The stolen BTC is apparently dormant to a large extent, the final major movement is a wallet consolidation in July 2024.
Due to the appreciation of the price of bitcoin since 2020, the current value of the stolen property is estimated to be $ 14.5 billion. The wallet is attached to the lubian hacker, which is tracked by Arkham, the 13th largest BTC holder – Mount Gox crosses the holdings associated with Breach.
To date, both hackers and Lubian are believed to have still controlled their respective BTC balance. Arkham has published wallet trackers for both sides, but no additional details have been given about the identity included in it.
