Latest Ruling in the Qian Zhimin Case: 61,000 Bitcoins Surge 200-Fold, Chinese Victims May Only Recover Their Principal

On October 12, the UK High Court ruled on the more than 61,000 bitcoins involved in the illegal fundraising case of Tianjin Blue Sky Gegr: the property rights claims of Chinese victims should be judged according to Chinese law.

Purchased at an average price of 2,815 yuan each in 2014, these bitcoins are now worth approximately 560,000 yuan each, with a total value exceeding 34 billion RMB. However, because Chinese law does not recognize the property status of bitcoins, roughly 16,000 registered Chinese claimants will most likely only recover their principal and interest, missing out on the 200-fold appreciation gain.

The starting point of this story takes us back ten years ago to a banquet hall in a Tianjin hotel, where a woman was wheeled onto the stage.

Sister Hua

In late autumn 2016, inside a banquet hall at a certain hotel in Tianjin, over a thousand people waited in breathless anticipation.

The lights dimmed, music began to play, and a woman draped in a pinkish-white veil was wheeled onto the stage. The scene was utterly absurd, resembling a cult baptism ritual or some dark version of a reality TV show, yet no one in the audience found it strange. Among them were retired teachers, small business owners, and a doctor who had sunk 12 million into the scheme. They were all waiting for "Sister Hua" to speak.

Sister Hua's real name is Qian Zhimin, but within the Tianjin Blue Sky Gegr network, no one called her by her birth name. She operated under several aliases: "Hua Hua," "Sister Hua," "Zhang Yadi," and "Li Xia." Regardless of the name used, she occupied the same role in their hearts: the God of Wealth.

Her slogan was printed on all promotional materials: "Give Gegr three years, and Gegr will give you three lifetimes of prosperity."

The people below were convinced beyond doubt.

A "Genius Move" in a Ponzi Scheme

The operational model of Blue Sky Gegr was hardly novel: raise funds, promise high returns, and rob Peter to pay Paul. Established in Tianjin in March 2014, it was divided into seven regional divisions, issued ten wealth management products, and promised returns of one to three times the principal. At its peak, this machine absorbed investments from over 120,000 investors, with cumulative fundraising exceeding 40 billion yuan.

But Sister Hua did something that almost no other Ponzi scheme operator of her era would have thought of.

She took a massive sum of money and went to Huobi to buy bitcoins.

Bought at an average price of about 2,815 yuan each in 2014, she acquired at least 61,000 coins. Court evidence in the UK suggests the total volume of bitcoins she handled may have reached 190,000, with approximately 120,000 still unaccounted for.

What did the bitcoin market look like in 2014? There were no ETFs, no BlackRock, and the entire market was still reeling from the aftershocks of the Mt. Gox collapse. Most Chinese investors couldn't even explain the difference between bitcoin and Tencent's Q Coins. Sister Hua probably didn't understand the underlying technology either, but she knew one thing: these assets are bearer instruments, portable, and invisible to authorities.

From a criminal standpoint, this was a genius-level asset transfer operation. From an investment perspective, it might be the most successful purchase globally over the past decade.

The only catch is that it was funded entirely with others' hard-earned blood and sweat money.

The Downfall of the "Bitcoin Queen"

In July 2017, Blue Sky Gegr halted payouts. The 120,000 investors discovered that the promise of "three lifetimes of prosperity" couldn't even last three months.

Sister Hua vanished.

Using a forged passport under the identity "Zhang Yadi," she fled to the UK. The 61,000 bitcoins accompanied her. By the end of 2017, the price of each coin had surged from 2,815 yuan to over 100,000 yuan.

Once in the UK, Sister Hua made no effort to stay low-key. In 2018, she attempted to purchase a £23.5 million mansion in Hampstead, London, using bitcoins. The deal fell through at the final stage due to "unexplainable source of funds." This detail later became the starting point for UK police investigations.

In May 2021, UK police seized approximately 61,000 bitcoins registered under her name. Valued at over £3 billion at the time, this marked the largest cryptocurrency seizure in global law enforcement history. British media dubbed her "The Bitcoin Queen."

In April 2024, Sister Hua was arrested in Yorkshire under a false identity. In September 2025, she pleaded guilty at Southwark Criminal Court in London. Later that November, she was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months.

Back in China, the Tianjin court handed down sentences in September 2021 to the accomplices who remained domestically: Ren Jiangtao received 10 years, and Huang Yafang got 5 years. In 2023, domestic victims began receiving two rounds of restitution: 8% in May and another 5% in October.

You put in 100 yuan, and you got back 13.

A Legal Question Worth 34 Billion

What truly left people with mixed feelings occurred on October 12, 2026.

Those 61,000 bitcoins, which cost 2,815 yuan apiece in 2014, reached a value of approximately 560,000 yuan each by this day. That is nearly a 200-fold increase. The total value of the 61,000 coins exceeded 34 billion RMB, almost nearing the 40 billion yuan total raised by Blue Sky Gegr back then. The money swindled away years ago, through bitcoin's meteoric rise, had actually returned in large part.

But can the victims actually get their hands on it?

According to Caixin reports, the UK High Court issued a key ruling on this day: for the approximately 16,000 Chinese victims who registered their claims under the UK Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) recovery procedure, their property rights claims shall be governed by Chinese law, not British law.

The difference is fatal.

Under British law, bitcoin is classified as "property," allowing victims to claim ownership of the bitcoins themselves, including their full value after the 200-fold appreciation. However, Chinese law does not recognize the property status of bitcoins, and judicial rulings involving cryptocurrency typically only support the return of the original investment plus interest.

To put it plainly: You invested 100 units back then. Sister Hua used that 100 to buy bitcoin, which grew to 20,000. But the law only acknowledges your original 100 plus a bit of interest. What about the 19,900 in gains? That has nothing to do with you.

On that October 12, across countless WeChat groups dedicated to protecting rights, this news landed like a bucket of cold water.

Only One Winner

There is one more uncomfortable detail.

The UK has an asset recovery incentive mechanism known as ARIS. Under this scheme, if recovered criminal assets have no lawful claimants, 50 percent goes to HM Treasury.

Put these puzzle pieces together: the 16,000 Chinese victims can only recover principal plus interest under Chinese law; the portion representing the 200-fold appreciation of the bitcoin, lacking a "lawful claimant," has a significant probability of flowing into the British treasury.

The bitcoin purchased with the victims' money appreciated 200 times, yet the gains went to another country's finance ministry. No novelist would dare write such a plot.

The judgment has not yet been fully finalized. The court explicitly stated in its ruling that whether Chinese victims can obtain property rights to the involved bitcoins under Chinese law requires further examination of evidence and legal details. The parties also retain the right to appeal.

But the direction is already clear.

Ponzi schemes have existed for millennia, donning new disguises every few years with nothing particularly new. What makes this case so brutal is this: through sheer coincidence, the victims' hard-earned money executed the highest-returning trade globally over the past decade. Buying bitcoin at 2,815 yuan, surging to 560,000—a 200-fold gain. Yet they will likely never collect this profit.

Sister Hua serves her sentence behind bars, while 16,000 victims await a difficult appeal. The 61,000 bitcoins sit quietly in the UK government's custodial account, fluctuating and appreciating day by day.

In the end, there is only one winner.

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