China’s cybersecurity agency has accused the U.S. government of orchestrating a $13 billion bitcoin theft, according to a Bloomberg report published on Tuesday. The cybersecurity control agency in China has officially charged the United States government with perpetrating a huge theft of 13 billion dollars of Bitcoin. This is the accusation in relation to the case of the hack in the Chinese based LuBian mining pool in December 2020, where more than 127,000 Bitcoin was stolen. Besides, the assertion is a major and aggressive intensification of the current cyber and geopolitical struggles between the two world powers.
Beijing Accuses US of Artificially covering seizure of assets with a hack.
Chinese National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) asserts that the theft had been a state-level attack by a hacker. The agency partly relied on the peculiar treatment of the stolen digital resources in making its claim. The 127, 272 Bitcoin tokens were recluse almost four years post the hack of 2020. Then, the money abruptly transferred to new wallets in mid-2024. These new addresses were later classified by blockchain analysts like Arkham Intelligence to be those of the U.S. government.
The charges are very intricate since the U.S department of justice (DOJ) charged Chen Zhi, the leader of the Prince Group in Cambodia in October. The DOJ claimed that the 127,000 Bitcoin tokens that were later confiscated by the U.S. government were linked up to Chen in an international scheme of wire fraud and money laundering. However, CVERC is in effect insinuating that the first hacking occurred in 2020 by the U.S. They consider the U.S. afterward afterwards used the legal seizure against Chen as a coverup to disguise their own state-owned theft of the vast mass of digital assets. This is what the Chinese media is referring to as a thieves rob thieves operation.
Cryptocurrency Standoff Markets Shake with Geopolitics.
The US government has refused to respond to the issue of how or when the Bitcoin confiscation will occur. Rather, the U.S officials insist that the seizure was legal and it was done in accordance with the set legal procedures as a significant part of the anti-fraud and money laundering investigation. Such an omission in the description of the seizure procedure contributes to the controversy. The controversial Bitcoin is now a proportion of approximately 0.65 per cent. of the total supply in circulation.
Moreover, the legal struggle is still on in the American courts. The lawyer of the Prince Group and Chen Zhi Matthew L. Schwartz has petitioned the court of the United States to grant Chen Zhi more time. His legal team is engaged in vigorous collaboration with cryptocurrency specialists in order to trace the Bitcoin that was seized by the government that was initially stolen in 2020. According to Schwartz, the charges filed against his client by the government are grossly misplaced. This is a dispute of high stakes after all, which highlights the new role of digital assets. Cryptocurrencies now can be seen as obviously strategic assets at the center of national security and international diplomatic conflict as opposed to the traditional contests over resources.