\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKey Takeaways<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
A long-unsolved mystery in the crypto world has just been brought to mainstream attention. <\/p>\n
Blockchain sleuths at Arkham Intelligence have revealed<\/a> that LuBian, a Chinese Bitcoin [BTC]<\/a> mining pool, was the victim of a colossal hack back in December 2020, which saw 127,426 BTC vanish without a trace. <\/p>\n At the time, the stolen coins were worth $3.5 billion, which is an absurdly high amount to begin with. <\/p>\n But with Bitcoin\u2019s meteoric rise in the following years, the coins\u2019 value soared to a staggering $14.5 billion, officially marking it as the largest crypto heist in history.<\/p>\n Arkham Intelligence uncovers the scam<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Yet for years, neither LuBian nor the attacker disclosed the incident, keeping it entirely under wraps.<\/p>\n In fact, hackers reportedly drained about 90% of LuBian\u2019s funds before the pool managed to secure the remaining 11,886 BTC in recovery wallets, dealing a massive hit to the pool\u2019s treasury.<\/p>\n But, it didn\u2019t stop there. The next day, the breach further escalated, with another $6 million in BTC and USDT going out of LuBian\u2019s wallets.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Arkham traced the exploit back to weak private key generation, which likely made LuBian\u2019s wallets susceptible to brute-force attacks.<\/p>\n Crypto weaknesses, exposed<\/p>\n The LuBian hack has now eclipsed all previous crypto thefts, even surpassing February\u2019s $1.5 billion ByBit breach<\/a>, which was earlier dubbed as the largest in history. <\/p>\n Though unlike ByBit, whose loss was traced back to a compromised developer machine, LuBian\u2019s vulnerability reportedly stemmed from flawed Trust Wallet code that relied on weak 32-bit entropy, a method already exploited in past wallet breaches. <\/p>\n Remarkably, the hacker has left the stolen Bitcoin untouched, consolidating it into a single wallet as recently as July 2024. <\/p>\n At $14.5 billion in value, the stash makes the perpetrator the 13th-largest BTC holder, ranking above even the infamous Mt. Gox hacker.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n At the same time, less technically sophisticated scams are also taking place across the ecosystem, impacting smaller retail players as well. <\/p>\n Therefore, as scrutiny intensifies across both corporate and individual actors in crypto, the LuBian incident stands as a stark reminder of the ecosystem\u2019s fragility, both technical and reputational.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPrevious: Over 90% of Bitcoin holders still in profit \u2013 Is Fed fueling the fire?<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n