$14.5 Billion Bitcoin Heist Rocks Chinese Mining Pool LuBian

A massive Bitcoin heist occurred in December 2020 when hackers stole $14.5 billion worth of BTC from Chinese mining pool LuBian, according to blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.

The attack involved 127,426 BTC and was potentially the largest crypto theft by dollar value at the time. LuBian had grown rapidly to become the sixth-largest Bitcoin mining pool before suddenly disappearing in February 2021.

Hackers exploited vulnerabilities in LuBian's private key generation algorithm through brute-force attacks, leading to the massive loss.