Author: Bin Ge, Shenchao
On October 12, the UK High Court ruled on the more than 61,000 bitcoins involved in the Tianjin Blue Sky Gerui illegal fundraising case: the property rights claims of Chinese victims should be judged according to Chinese law.
These bitcoins were bought in 2014 at an average price of 2,815 yuan, and now each is worth about 560,000 yuan, with a total value exceeding 34 billion yuan. But Chinese law does not recognize bitcoin as property, and the roughly 16,000 registered Chinese victims seeking recovery will most likely only be able to recover principal and interest, unable to share in the 200-fold appreciation gains.
The starting point of this story goes back ten years, to a hotel banquet hall in Tianjin, where a woman was pushed onto the stage in a wheelchair.
Sister Hua
In the late autumn of 2016, in a hotel banquet hall in Tianjin, more than a thousand people waited with bated breath.
The lights dimmed, the music played, and a woman draped in a pinkish-white veil was pushed onto the stage in a wheelchair. The scene was absurd in the extreme, like a cult baptism ceremony, or some dark version of a reality show, but no one in the audience thought anything was wrong. Among them were retired teachers, small business owners, and a doctor who had put in 12 million yuan. They were waiting for "Sister Hua" to speak.
Sister Hua's real name is Qian Zhimin, but within the Tianjin Blue Sky Gerui system, no one called her by her real name. She had several identities: "Huahua," "Sister Hua," "Zhang Yadi," "Li Xia." No matter what she was called, in the minds of these people she was always the same figure: the god of wealth.
Her slogan was printed on all promotional materials: "You give Gerui three years, Gerui gives you three lifetimes of wealth and honor."
The people below believed it without a doubt.
A "genius operation" of a Ponzi scheme
Blue Sky Gerui's operating model was not novel: raise funds, promise high returns, rob Peter to pay Paul. Founded in Tianjin in March 2014, it had seven regional business divisions and issued ten wealth management products, promising returns of one to three times. At its peak, this machine absorbed more than 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 had thought of.
She took a large sum of money and bought bitcoin on Huobi.
In 2014, at an average price of about 2,815 yuan per coin, she bought at least 61,000. Evidence from a UK court shows that the total amount of bitcoin she handled may have been as high as 190,000, of which about 120,000 remains unaccounted for to this day.
What did bitcoin mean in 2014? No ETF, no BlackRock, and the entire market was still fearful from the aftershocks of the Mt. Gox incident. Most Chinese investors could not even clearly explain the difference between bitcoin and Q coins. Sister Hua probably did not understand bitcoin's technical principles either, but she understood one thing: this thing is bearer-based, can be taken away, and cannot be traced by the authorities.
From a criminal perspective, this was a genius-level asset transfer operation. From an investment perspective, this may have been the most successful purchase in the world over the past decade.
Except that it was all bought with other people's hard-earned money.
The end of the "Bitcoin Queen"
In July 2017, Blue Sky Gerui stopped redeeming payments. The 120,000 investors discovered that the promise of "three lifetimes of wealth and honor" could not even last three months.
Sister Hua disappeared.
Using a forged passport, she fled to the UK under the identity of "Zhang Yadi." The 61,000 bitcoins went with her. By the end of 2017, the price of each had risen from 2,815 yuan to more than 100,000 yuan.
After arriving in the UK, Sister Hua did not keep a low profile. In 2018, she tried to use bitcoin to buy a mansion in Hampstead, London, worth 23.5 million pounds. The transaction fell through at the final stage because "the source of funds could not be explained." This detail later became the starting point for the UK police's tracking.
In May 2021, UK police seized about 61,000 bitcoins under her name. At prices at the time, the total value exceeded 3 billion pounds. This was the largest cryptocurrency seizure in global law enforcement history. The British media gave her a title: "The Bitcoin Queen."
In April 2024, Sister Hua was arrested in Yorkshire under a false identity. In September 2025, she pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London. In November of the same year, she was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months.
On the Chinese side, the Tianjin court had already sentenced the accomplices who remained in the country in September 2021: Ren Jiangtao 10 years, Huang Yafang 5 years. In 2023, domestic victims successively received two rounds of compensation, 8% in May and another 5% in October.
Put in 100 yuan, get back 13 yuan.
A legal question worth 34 billion
What truly left people with mixed feelings happened on October 12, 2026.
Those 61,000 bitcoins, from 2,815 yuan each in 2014 to about 560,000 yuan each on that day. They had risen by almost 200 times. The total value of the 61,000 coins exceeded 34 billion yuan, almost approaching Blue Sky Gerui's total fundraising scale of 40 billion yuan that year. The money that had been defrauded back then, through bitcoin's wild rise, had unexpectedly come back by more than half.
But can the victims get it?
According to Caixin, the UK High Court made a key ruling that day: for the roughly 16,000 Chinese victims who registered claims through the UK's Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) recovery procedure, their property rights claims should be governed by Chinese law, not English law.
The difference is fatal.
English law characterizes bitcoin as "property," and victims can claim ownership of the bitcoin itself, including the full value after the 200-fold appreciation. But Chinese law does not recognize bitcoin's property attributes, and judicial judgments involving cryptocurrencies usually only support the return of the original investment plus interest.
Translated into plain language: you invested 100 yuan back then, Sister Hua used that 100 yuan to buy bitcoin and it rose to 20,000, but the law only recognizes your 100 yuan plus a little interest. That appreciation of 19,900? It has nothing to do with you.
On October 12, in countless rights-defense WeChat groups, this news landed like a bucket of cold water.
Only one winner
There is another even more uncomfortable detail.
The UK has an asset recovery incentive mechanism called ARIS. Under these rules, if recovered criminal assets have no legitimate claimant, 50% goes to the UK Treasury.
Put these pieces together: the 16,000 Chinese victims can only recover principal plus interest under Chinese law; the portion of bitcoin's 200-fold appreciation, because there is no "legitimate claimant," has a considerable chance of flowing into the UK national treasury.
The bitcoin bought with the victims' money rose 200-fold, and the appreciation went to another country's treasury. Even novelists would not dare to write such a plot.
The ruling has not yet been finalized. In the decision, the court explicitly stated that whether the Chinese victims can obtain property rights over the bitcoins involved under Chinese law requires further examination of evidence and legal details. The parties may also apply to appeal.
But the direction is already clear.
Ponzi schemes have existed for thousands of years, coming back every few years under a new guise, and there is nothing new about that. What is cruel about this case is this: the victims' hard-earned money, by a strange twist of fate, completed the highest-return trade in the world over the past decade. Bought bitcoin at 2,815 yuan, rose to 560,000, 200 times. But they will most likely never be able to obtain this return.
Sister Hua is serving her sentence in prison, and 16,000 victims are waiting for a difficult appeal. The 61,000 bitcoins lie quietly in the UK government's custody account, still fluctuating every day, still appreciating.
In the end, there is only one winner.