Chinese Law Governs Claims to 61,000 Seized Bitcoin, UK Court Rules

The High Court in London has ruled that Chinese law, not English law, decides whether victims of a Chinese investment fraud hold any ownership right in the 61,000 bitcoin seized from Zhimin Qian. Mr Justice Mark Turner handed the judgment down on Monday. He sided with the Director of Public Prosecutions against claimants who wanted English law, or a blend of the two. The ruling fixes which law applies and settles nothing else. Whether any investor can establish an interest goes to a later hearing, on expert evidence about what Chinese law provides. Lawyers for the claimants are appealing.

Where the damage happened

Turner's reasoning turns on geography. The schemes ran in China between 2014 and 2017, the payments were made there, and the bitcoin was bought there.

"The relevant damage occurred in China. The Applicants parted with their money in China," the judge wrote.

Cointelegraph carries both sentences; CoinDesk and Decrypt quote only the first. news.bitcoin.com quotes a separate line, "The applicable law is Chinese law." The Block reports that Turner reached the same answer by each route he considered: tracing coin in England cannot revive a property right the claimants lost in China. Applicants have to show a proprietary interest in the coin itself, not, in his words, "merely a claim for repayment from the fraudsters". That distinction is the whole case. A creditor of a collapsed scheme is not an owner of what the scheme bought. The claims run under section 281 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, which asks whether seized property belongs to the applicant.

Three victim counts, none of them the same number

CoinDesk and Crypto Briefing describe a scheme that defrauded more than 128,000 investors. Decrypt, FinanceFeeds and news.bitcoin.com instead report an audit identifying at least 128,409 investment contracts, with FinanceFeeds noting the court's caution that a tally of contracts is not a count of people. The Block, citing Caixin, puts about 16,000 victims joined to the UK proceedings. Cointelegraph says the firm Candey acts for roughly 5,700. A contract count, a claimant count and one firm's client list measure different things. None of the seven accounts squares them.

The loss figures diverge too. Crypto Briefing puts victim losses near £600 million. Three other outlets give gross collections of about RMB 40.2 billion, roughly £4.1 billion, against about RMB 34.1 billion returned to some investors. A net loss and a pair of gross flows are not the same measurement, and no outlet connects them. We could not establish which figure the court worked from.

What the coin is worth depends on who is counting

Three valuations circulated on Tuesday. The Financial Times basis, carried by CoinDesk and The Block, is about £3.8 billion, which both render as roughly $5 billion. Cointelegraph cites CoinGecko for more than $5 billion. The Block adds Arkham's estimate of 61,245 BTC worth about $5.1 billion; news.bitcoin.com gives the same holding to the decimal. Those readings are hours and data providers apart. They do not reconcile. The coin itself has not moved. The Metropolitan Police took it during searches on 31 October and 1 November 2018, unlike the tranche in which 12,267 seized bitcoin moved to unlabeled addresses with no sale shown.

The hearing that decides it has no date

The Crown Prosecution Service told the FT there "will be a further hearing to determine the application of the law". Nobody has said when. Cointelegraph notes the case stays in London and does not move to a Chinese court. Fieldfisher, lead firm for the individual claimants, is pursuing an appeal, which Crypto Briefing alone puts in 2027. The Block, reading Caixin, says recovery may be capped at the original investment plus interest, leaving bitcoin's appreciation out of reach; that reading rests on one outlet's account of one Chinese report. Qian was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in November 2025 after admitting fraud and money-laundering offences. The criminal side is closed. Who ends up with the coin is not, and the same contest runs elsewhere, as when Sam Bankman-Fried asked the Supreme Court to undo an $11 billion forfeiture.