Bitcoin Heist: How One Hacker Outsmarted Everyone and Laughed All the Way to the Blockchain 🤑

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Imagine this: a heist so quiet, so slick, it took the world four whole years to notice. No guns, no masks, just a keyboard and a whole lot of nerve. Welcome to the greatest Bitcoin robbery of all time, a tale so absurd it could only happen in the Wild West of cryptocurrency. 🤠

  • 🚨 A record-breaking Bitcoin hack has finally been uncovered, after some digital detectives (read: blockchain nerds) realized someone swiped 127,426 BTC from LuBian back in 2020.
  • 💰 At today’s prices, that’s nearly $15 billion. Yes, you read that right. Billion. With a B.
  • 🤫 The hacker? Still sitting on the loot, barely touching it. Probably sipping a mai tai on a private island, laughing at us all.

According to the folks at Arkham Intelligence (who sound like they should be solving Batman-level crimes), the target was LuBian, a Chinese mining pool that was once a big fish in the Bitcoin pond. Back in 2020, they controlled 6% of the Bitcoin network’s hash rate, with operations stretching from China to Iran. Fancy, right? 🌏

The heist went down around December 28, 2020, when our mystery hacker drained 127,426 BTC from LuBian’s vaults. At the time, that was worth a cool $3.5 billion. But wait, there’s more! The next day, another $6 million in BTC and USDT vanished from a linked address. Because why stop at one heist when you can have two? 🕵️‍♂️

BREAKING: ARKHAM UNCOVERS $3.5B HEIST – THE LARGEST EVER

LuBian was a Chinese mining pool with facilities in China & Iran. Based on analysis of on-chain data, it appears that 127,426 BTC was stolen in December 2020, worth $3.5 billion then and now worth…

— Arkham (@arkham) August 2, 2025

Here’s the kicker: neither LuBian nor the hacker ever said a peep about it. Arkham only figured it out after years of scratching their heads over some “unexplained on-chain activity.” Turns out, it was all part of a masterfully coordinated cyberattack. Or, as I like to call it, the greatest game of digital hide-and-seek ever played. 🎭

How the LuBian Hack Happened (Spoiler: It Was Embarrassingly Simple)

Arkham’s sleuths think LuBian was using a weak private key generation method, the cryptographic equivalent of leaving your front door unlocked with a “Please Rob Me” sign. The hacker, bless their heart, just waltzed right in and helped themselves to 90% of the pool’s BTC in two days. 🏃‍♂️💨

On December 31, LuBian tried to save what was left by moving it to recovery wallets. They even sent 1,500 messages to the hacker using the Bitcoin OP_RETURN function, basically begging, “Please give it back, we’ll be good, we promise!” Cost them 1.4 BTC, which is like paying a ransom note in Monopoly money. 🧾

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. The hacker still holds the coins, mostly untouched until a recent wallet consolidation in July 2024. LuBian managed to keep 11,886 BTC, now worth $1.35 billion, but the stolen stash has ballooned to $14.5 billion. That makes our hacker one of the biggest BTC holders out there, even outranking the infamous 2011 Mt. Gox attacker. 🎖️

Hacks and scams? Oh, they’re the crypto industry’s favorite pastime. This year alone, over $3.1 billion has vanished into the digital ether thanks to exchange breaches, protocol exploits, and good old-fashioned phishing. 🌊💸

With losses stacking up like a game of Jenga, everyone’s screaming for better security. But let’s be real: as long as there’s money to be stolen, there will be people trying to steal it. It’s the circle of crypto life. 🦁

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2025-08-04 15:23