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China hates crypto and scams, but is now outraged USA acquired bitcoin from a scammer. A new theory from the agency that brought us ‘America hacked itself to blame Beijing’. China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) has alleged a nation-state entity, probably the USA, was behind a 2020 attack on a bitcoin mining operation and by doing so has gone into bat for entities that Beijing usually blasts. CVERC on Sunday used its Weixin account to publish a report that recounts the late 2020 attack on bitcoin mining pool operator LuBian, which operated in Iran and China, and was targeted in an attack that saw unknown parties make off with 127,272 bitcoin. The Chinese agency alleges that the owner of the stolen bitcoin was Chen Zhi, chairman of the Prince Group of Cambodia, who “repeatedly posted messages on the blockchain in early 2021 and July 2022, appealing to the hackers to return the stolen Bitcoin and offering to pay a ransom, but received no response.” CVERC notes that whoever stole the bitcoin stashed them in a wallet that remained “almost untouched” for four years. The agency thinks that run-of-the-mill criminals would have cashed out at some point, so leaving the wallet dormant is a sign of a nation-state actor having hacked LuBian. The Chinese agency’s report then jumps forward to October 14th, 2025, when the US Department of Justice announced the unsealing of an indictment that charges Chen Zhi with wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy “for directing Prince Group’s operation of forced-labor scam compounds across Cambodia.” The DoJ also filed a civil forfeiture complaint against approximately 127,271 Bitcoin that it says are the “proceeds and instrumentalities” of Zhi’s fraud and money laundering schemes. According to the DoJ, the BTC was “previously stored in unhosted cryptocurrency wallets whose private keys the defendant had in his possession” but are now in the custody of the U.S. government. CVERC’s document includes a forensic analysis of blockchain entries that suggests the trove of 127,271 BTC made their way to Uncle Sam. China and the US are therefore in agreement on most of the facts: Someone stole BTC from Zhi, and it ended up in Uncle Sam’s hands. Yet CVERC’s document omits any mention of Zhi’s connection to scam camps. That’s odd because China hates the camps, as many of the forced laborers who work in them are Chinese citizens. The scammers also target people in China and have caused substantial losses. Chinese authorities have proudly advertised their success dismantling scam camps, while state media has enthusiastically reported death sentences imposed on camp operators. Another peculiarity in CVERC’s statement is that it concludes with advice to China’s blockchain community, and operators of mining pools, to improve their security. China is entirely happy for local organizations to use blockchains, but banned cryptocurrency mining and trading in 2021. CVERC telling mining pool operators how to arrange their affairs seemingly runs counter to that policy – or perhaps reflects the fact that China has not succeeded in stamping out its cryptocurrency industry. Another possible motive is that CVERC has crafted a story that will go down well in China, a suggestion The Register makes because China also consistently states it conducts no malicious cyber-ops. CVERC has backed that assertion with multiple reports claiming the USA and its allies made up the Volt Typhoon gang and faked its hack attacks purely to discredit China.