Interestingly, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in official court filings that the mining pool Lubian.com “received large sums of cryptocurrency from sources unrelated to new mining.” In an earlier piece, Bitcoin.com News highlighted Arkham Intelligence’s findings, noting that the DOJ described Lubian as having been “initially funded and operated using profits from criminal operations.”
The mining pool operated primarily in the early 2020s, with its name “Lubian” translating to “roadside” in Chinese. At its peak, the pool commanded more than 4% of the global hashrate and briefly topped 6% in May 2020. It began mining around Apr. 26, 2020, tagging its blocks with “Buffett” — a tongue-in-cheek identifier referencing the coinbase string embedded in the block’s input data. That tag stayed in use until May 9, 2020.
By May 10, 2020, at Bitcoin block 629,755, Lubian swapped its coinbase identifier to “lubian.com,” catching the eye of trackers like BTC.com and marking its grand debut in the open. Despite its growing share, details about Lubian’s internal workings were scarce, adding an air of mystery to its rise. According to mempool.space data, the pool mined roughly 1,783 blocks before fading from view.
On mempool.space, the coinbase tags “Lubian” and “Buffett” collectively raked in roughly 13,279 BTC in rewards — though the real total may have been higher if the pool mined covertly. The wallet linked to Lubian’s mining days, identified as “34Jpa4,” logged receipts totaling 14,167.39 BTC. Lubian appeared and vanished like a fleeting signal, and years later, Arkham’s investigation revealed that the pool’s funds had mysteriously vanished — an incident the company never publicly acknowledged.
Lubian-linked funds outside the massive 127,000-plus BTC seizure made fresh moves today, with 16,237 BTC shifting to new addresses. Analyst Emmett Gallic noted on X on Wednesday that close to 16,000 of those bitcoins were sanctioned by the U.S. government. “The USG sanctions 16K BTC related to Chen Zhi (Person they seized 127K BTC from earlier). Chen Zhi is still on the run,” Gallic said.
Arkham tagged the wallets on its explorer as “chen-zhi-sanctioned,” showing a combined balance of 15,957.1557161 BTC. After Gallic’s post on X, Arkham reported that the U.S. government may have scooped up another $2.4 billion in bitcoin tied to addresses holding 21,238.28484501 BTC. “$2.4 Billion of BTC moved out of Lubian-associated wallets today, which may have represented US Government seizures. This is in addition to the $14.1 Billion revealed yesterday,” Arkham explained on X.
The firm added:
“These bitcoins are currently held in wallets that have neither been sanctioned, nor mentioned in any court documents – implying that this could be a seizure that has yet to be announced.”
On Arkham’s platform, the entity now carries the label “lubian-potential-seizure,” signaling its suspected connection to the expanding pool of confiscated bitcoin.
- What is the Lubian mining pool?
Lubian was a China-linked bitcoin mining pool active in the early 2020s, later tied to alleged criminal proceeds connected to fugitive Chen Zhi. - How much bitcoin was recently moved?
Roughly 16,237 BTC linked to Lubian wallets shifted to new addresses in the past 24 hours. - What did Arkham Intelligence uncover?
Arkham reported that about $2.4 billion in bitcoin from Lubian-associated wallets may represent a fresh U.S. government seizure. - Why are the wallets labeled “chen-zhi-sanctioned”?
The addresses are flagged for ties to Chen Zhi, whose network was accused of laundering funds through Lubian’s mining operations.
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