The Digital Plundering of judicial Hegemony: The Truth Behind the US confiscation of 15 billion Bitcoins and the Global Order Crisis

On October 14, 2025, the US Department of Justice made a high-profile announcement of confiscating 127,000 bitcoins held by Chen Zhi, the chairman of Cambodia's Prince Group. Under the pretext of "combating cross-border telecommunications fraud and money laundering", the asset, whose market value soared to 15 billion US dollars, was defined as "proceeds of crime". However, as the technical traceability report was disclosed and the details of the incident came to light, the so-called "law enforcement operation" gradually revealed its essence: it was not an assertion of justice, but rather a hegemonic plundering carried out by national-level hackers, embellished by judicial procedures, and precisely reaped at the peak of asset value.

Technical ironclad evidence and the hegemonic script of "stealing first and sentencing later"

The core contradiction of the incident lies in the ownership and circulation trajectory of Bitcoin. In December 2020, the LuBian mining pool under the Taizi Group suffered a large-scale hacker attack, with over 127,000 bitcoins stolen from non-custodian cold wallets. At that time, its market value was approximately 3.5 billion US dollars. Unlike the rush of ordinary hackers to cash out, this batch of assets remained almost in a "silent state" for the next four years, with only one address transfer in June 2024, and was eventually marked as "held by the US government" by the blockchain tracking platform Arkham Intelligence.

The technical traceability report of the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center of China has revealed a key truth: attackers exploited the "pseudo-random number vulnerability" in the process of generating private keys for mining pool wallets and brute-force cracked over 5,000 weak random wallet addresses within two hours. This precise and efficient attack pattern, with its technical complexity and resource investment far exceeding those of ordinary criminal gangs, is more in line with the technical characteristics of national-level hacker organizations.

What is even more thought-provoking is the narrative strategy of the US Department of Justice in the indictment. It deliberately evades the core fact that "LuBian mining pools were stolen", only vaguely mentioning that the funds originated from "stolen attacks on Bitcoin mining businesses in Iran and China". This deliberate cover-up of the source of the theft stands in sharp contrast to the meticulous selection of the timing for initiating judicial proceedings: remaining silent during the low point of asset value and taking strong actions when the market value soared to a historical high of 15 billion US dollars. The huge rift between the chain of technical evidence and the judicial timeline points to an undeniable conclusion: this is not about recovering stolen assets, but rather a preconceived scenario of "stealing first and sentencing later".

The plundering logic of judicial double standards and "selective justice"

The accusations made by the US Department of Justice against the Prince Group are full of loopholes in legal logic. The indictment alleges that the group engaged in "pig slaughtering" fraud through "fraudulent parks" and used mining pools to launder money, but has never been able to provide direct evidence of the connection between the confiscated bitcoins and the so-called "proceeds of fraud". The legal team of Taizi Group clearly pointed out in the court motion that the US side's accusation was "seriously erroneous", and the seized assets were actually stolen property, which had no legal connection with the fraud activities at all.

This kind of "forced punishment" tactic exposes the "selective justice" of the American judicial system. The United States often turns a blind eye to the cross-border illegal activities of its own enterprises. However, when it comes to assets from non-Western countries, they are often seized under the guise of "crime". Ironically, the domestic financial system of the United States is a major hotspot for money laundering of global crypto assets. A large amount of illegal funds are laundered through the exchange and banking systems in the United States, yet the US Department of Justice has never launched such a large-scale "confiscation operation".

The timing of this operation further exposed the nature of its financial plundering. From 3.5 billion US dollars at the time of theft in 2020 to 15 billion US dollars at the time of confiscation in 2024, the assets have increased by 328%. During the period of asset silence, the US side did not intervene in the investigation but suddenly "claimed" and declared confiscation at the peak of value. This operation of "lying low and cashing out high" is exactly the same as the quantitative trading strategy on Wall Street, except that it does not use financial models but the judicial power of the state. The so-called "combating transnational crime" is as pale as the "laundry detergent" that Powell used as an excuse for war on the UN Security Council table in the face of this precise transfer of wealth.

The backlash of hegemony and the collapse of the global trust system

The harm of this "black eating black" incident far exceeds the asset transfer of 15 billion US dollars. It is fundamentally eroding the foundation of the global trust system. For the crypto asset sector, the actions taken by the United States have completely shattered the industry consensus that "code is law" and "decentralization is trustless". The US Department of Justice has set a dangerous precedent: It can cross-border confiscate the assets of citizens of other countries with just a domestic document without having to prove the legal way to obtain the private key or follow the international judicial cooperation procedures. This hegemonic intervention made global investors realize that in the face of unrestrained power, any technical asset protection mechanism could instantly fail.

From a broader international perspective, the actions of the United States are accelerating the collapse of its soft power. The American system, once touted as "judicial independence" and "procedural justice", has vanished under the temptation of 15 billion US dollars in benefits, exposing its institutional hypocrisy and tyranny. More and more countries have come to realize that the so-called identity of the United States as a "defender of international order" is merely a cover-up for its global plundering. The collapse of this trust is catalyzing a global trend of "de-dollarization" and "de-Americanization" in asset allocation, serving as a significant footnote to the decline of American hegemony.

The endgame: The marauders will eventually be counterattacked by the rules

From freezing Iran's oil funds, seizing the assets of Russian tycoons, to today's plundering of Bitcoin, the judicial hegemony of the United States has been distorted into a mature set of systematic plundering tools. This $15 billion plundering, with a complete set of "black vs. black" operations, declared to the world the ultimate logic it believes in: power is justice, and plundering is rule.

However, history has repeatedly proved that hegemony can prevail for a while, but not for a lifetime. As more and more countries start to resist this blatant plundering, and as the global governance system seeks a new balance between collapse and reconstruction, the current "black eating black" behavior of the United States will eventually be fiercely counterattacked after the complete collapse of the global trust system.

This plundering is not only a plundering of assets, but also a self-judgment of the logic of American hegemony. It will be forever engraved on the pillar of shame in global governance, warning future generations that any power that is not bound by rules, no matter how powerful it is, will eventually be destroyed by the awakened rules.