01 The Narrative of "Black Eats Black" Requires a Plausible Premise

The most dramatic accusation in the report comes from the Chen Zhi case. The report claims that a national-level hacking organization from the U.S. attacked the cold wallet of Chen Zhi's LuBian mining pool in 2020 through "underlying encryption vulnerabilities," stealing approximately 127,000 bitcoins, whereas the "forfeiture" action announced by the U.S. Department of Justice in October 2025 was merely a way to "legalize" this previously stolen asset—a typical case of "black eating black."

The problem with this narrative lies in its core premise—"bitcoins in cold wallets can be cracked by national-level hackers through underlying encryption vulnerabilities”—which has yet to be confirmed by any independent technical agency.

The underlying cryptographic foundation of bitcoin is Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and SHA-256 hash algorithm. As quantum computing has not yet become practical, there is a high consensus in the global cryptographic community regarding the security of these two algorithms. Thus far, no independently verified security agency or peer-reviewed academic paper has proven that the underlying encryption system of bitcoin has been breached. The report cites a “Technical Traceability Analysis Report on the LuBian Mining Pool Hacked and Stolen Bitcoin Incident,” which was published by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center itself, and its conclusions have not been verified by the international cryptographic community or independent third parties.

Of course, the report also prepared a rather clever self-justification: “The U.S. government’s assertion that ‘bitcoin has never been hacked’ may actually mean that ‘bitcoin has never been hacked by hackers outside the U.S. government.’” This statement has a somewhat profound flavor, but logically, it is an unfalsifiable proposition—since it is a secret operation, the absence of evidence itself becomes a reason to "prove existence." This mode of inference is similar to the structure of certain conspiracy theories.

The author is not endorsing the actions of the U.S. government, but when discussing such serious technical accusations, the evidence chain of "we published the report claiming so" is truly hard to be convincing.

02 The Chen Zhi Case: The Most Awkward Question Not Mentioned in the Report

Who is Chen Zhi? He is the founder of the Cambodian Prince Group, a leader of a transnational crime group that has engaged in telecommunications fraud and online gambling, operating in Southeast Asia for many years. It wasn't until January 7, 2026, that the Ministry of Public Security of China extradited him back from Cambodia.

This timeline is worth savoring.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Chen Zhi in October 2025, and notably seized approximately 127,000 bitcoins. Meanwhile, China extradited Chen Zhi back three months later, in January 2026. In other words, the U.S. acted first to take the bitcoins, and only then did China bring him back. This sequence is quite subtle— the bitcoins are already gone, but the person is returned to face the law.

What is even more worthy of inquiry is: Chen Zhi has been operating in Southeast Asia for many years, and the victims of his fraud industries are largely from mainland China, yet his criminal activities were already recorded long ago. Why was Chen Zhi able to "run rampant" in Southeast Asia for so many years before this? Why had judicial cooperation between China and Cambodia not managed to bring him to justice earlier? These questions were not mentioned even once in the report.

Interestingly, the report uses the term "black eats black"—a term that itself is actually accurate, admitting both that Chen Zhi is "black" and that the U.S. is also "black." The issue is not whether Chen Zhi is innocent; he clearly is not; the issue is, how much of the massive wealth extracted from the victims of telecommunications fraud was actually returned to the ordinary people who were deceived after being confiscated by the U.S. Department of Justice?

The report also pointed out a key detail: "The U.S. has allowed telecommunications fraud, and the vast majority of the huge profits extracted through technological hegemony have not been returned to the victims, which in fact constitutes an indirect plunder of foreign assets." This sentence instead serves as the strongest criticism throughout the report—while the U.S. claims to be "cracking down on transnational telecom fraud and money laundering," it confiscated bitcoins worth $15 billion, yet the victims are left nearly empty-handed. This is where the true outrage of "black eats black" lies: not that Chen Zhi's assets "should not be confiscated," but that this money has merely changed pockets, and the victims remain victims.

However, the report did not pursue this line of inquiry further, instead spending efforts to argue that "American hackers breached bitcoin"—the former is a true issue affecting victims' interests, while the latter is merely a technical accusation difficult to justify by itself. This misplacement of focus is regrettable.

As for why Chen Zhi was able to "run rampant" in Southeast Asia before, it seems it cannot be scrutinized, or to put it in a way characteristic of Chinese discourse: those who understand, understand.

03 The Zhao Changpeng Case: Would the Outcome Be Different with a Different Nationality?

Now let’s look at the Zhao Changpeng case.

Binance, as the world's largest virtual currency exchange, has long operated in a regulatory grey area, earlier allowing U.S. users to conduct large transactions without completing KYC verification, with internal senior executives fully aware of compliance loopholes yet deliberately maintaining them. According to publicly disclosed information, CZ himself even instructed employees to use Signal to destroy communication records and to replace the "U.S." label in the database with "UNKWN" to conceal the existence of U.S. users... These facts, even in the report's narrative, have not been denied.

Eventually, Binance paid a fine of $4.35 billion, Zhao Changpeng personally paid $150 million, signed a plea agreement, served 4 months in prison, and was reportedly granted a pardon afterward. However, CZ himself seems to harbor some resentment, wondering what the outcome would have been if he had remained in China (the author, a criminal defense lawyer, personally estimates at least 10 years).

The report classifies this as a hegemonic logic of "rule pre-setting—technical evidence collection—fine harvesting." This classification has some merit—America indeed incorporates global platforms into its regulatory framework through the long-arm jurisdiction of domestic law, which is certainly a topic worth discussing in international law. However, there is a detail that is quite interesting: Zhao Changpeng is a Canadian citizen, has long resided in the UAE, and Binance is registered in the Cayman Islands with no fixed headquarters. This carefully designed "stateless" structure is, in itself, a strategy to actively evade regulatory scrutiny. In this context, accusing the U.S. of "incorporating global platforms under jurisdiction" appears somewhat selective in its statement.

Even more interesting is a counterfactual deduction: what if China had not banned virtual currency trading, Binance was a legally registered company in China, and Zhao Changpeng was a Chinese citizen, and the U.S. still initiated a $4.35 billion fine lawsuit and criminal prosecution against him? What would the outcome have been? The narrative surrounding it might not be "the U.S. harvesting global assets," but rather something akin to a "certain long princess coming home" scenario. That familiar quip—"No regrets in this life for joining Huaxia, living in California"—here surprisingly gains a peculiar real-world footnote.

This flexibility in narrative itself indicates a problem.

04 The Correct Stance of "Anti-Hegemony" is Not to Attribute Everything to Hegemony

The long-arm jurisdiction of the United States is indeed a phenomenon worthy of vigilance. The global dominance of the dollar system, the U.S.'s ability to exert economic pressure on other countries through financial sanctions, the politicization of the SWIFT system—these are real issues that need to be taken seriously. If the report focused on this and developed serious legal and policy analyses, it would be valuable.

However, to label a telecommunications fraudster's confiscated bitcoins as "technical plunder," and to label a trading platform that has long operated in the regulatory grey area as an "economic harvest," such narrative approaches not only lack persuasiveness but also dilute truly important issues.

The governance dilemmas in the field of virtual currencies are real: its inherent decentralized characteristics make it difficult to fit into any single country's regulatory framework, and this regulatory vacuum has indeed provided soil for transnational crime. Chen Zhi’s telecommunications fraud empire has operated for many years, relying on the money laundering chain of virtual currencies; Binance’s rampant growth similarly relies in part on the lack of coordination in regulations among various countries (the so-called global "regulatory lowland"). In this sense, strengthening the regulation of virtual asset platforms, regardless of which country it comes from, holds its rationality from a centralized regulatory perspective.

The issue with Web3 is not whether it should be regulated, but rather who will regulate it, how it will be regulated, and whether the procedures of regulation are legitimate. This is the question worth delving into.

Simplifying this issue to "American hackers breached bitcoin" and "black eats black type plunder," neither helps in understanding the essence of the problem nor contributes to promoting genuine international regulatory coordination. Moreover, the cost of this narrative is: in order to criticize the U.S., it becomes necessary to downplay the crimes of figures like Chen Zhi, even indirectly turning the losses of their victims into a backdrop for the narrative.

This, in fact, is where the true childishness and boredom lies.

Domestically, the business activities of virtual currency exchanges are still classified as illegal financial activities. The stance of the People's Bank of China is clear and firm. Under this premise, discussing "how the U.S. harvests global virtual assets" inevitably feels somewhat dislocated—since this market is illegal domestically, whom exactly are we advocating for?