After the hack, Chen Zhi and his Crown Prince Group posted messages on the blockchain in early 2021 and July 2022, calling out to the hacker, hoping for the stolen bitcoins to be returned and expressing willingness to pay a ransom, but received no response. Strangely, after the massive bitcoin theft, the bitcoins remained dormant in the hacker-controlled bitcoin wallet address for a long 4 years, almost untouched. This behavior clearly does not align with the typical hacker's rush to cash out for profit; rather, it seems more like a precise operation orchestrated by a "state-level hacker organization." It wasn't until June 2024 that these stolen bitcoins were moved to a new bitcoin wallet address and have remained untouched since.

On October 14, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice announced criminal charges against Chen Zhi and stated the seizure of 127,000 bitcoins from Chen Zhi and his Crown Prince Group. Various evidence indicates that the massive bitcoins seized by the U.S. government from Chen Zhi and his Crown Prince Group were actually the LuBian mining pool bitcoins that had been stolen by hackers using technical means as early as 2020. In other words, the U.S. government had already utilized hacker techniques to seize the 127,000 bitcoins held by Chen Zhi back in 2020, in a typical "hack-on-hack" event orchestrated by a state-level hacker organization.

[BlockBeats News]