The UK government just got a lot closer to keeping one of the largest Bitcoin hoards ever seized by a state. A High Court judge has ruled that Chinese law, not English law, will govern the property claims of victims in the Zhimin Qian fraud case.
That matters because roughly 61,000 Bitcoin sit at the center of the dispute. The stash is valued at somewhere between £3.8 billion and £5 billion.
What the court decided
The ruling came from Justice Mark Turner around October 12-13, 2026. He determined that the victims’ property rights claims fall under Chinese law.
The practical effect is significant. Victims now have less room to argue under English law for a share of the coins’ enormous appreciation since they were bought.
Crucially, this is a preliminary decision. It does not settle who ultimately owns the Bitcoin.
Instead, it sets the legal framework for the next phase of civil recovery proceedings. That phase will include expert evidence on how Chinese law treats these claims.
The victims are not accepting the outcome quietly. Their representatives, including law firm Fieldfisher, plan to appeal the choice-of-law ruling, with that appeal expected to be heard in 2027.
A fraud that aged remarkably well
The underlying scheme ran from 2014 to 2017. It deceived more than 128,000 people in China.
Those victims lost approximately £600 million in total. Qian’s operation converted proceeds into Bitcoin through the Huobi exchange.
Qian has already faced criminal consequences. She was sentenced in November 2025 to 11 years and 8 months.
Her accomplice, Seng Hok Ling, received 4 years and 11 months on money-laundering charges.
The assets were seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and the Crown Prosecution Service is working to secure them for the state. For now, the Bitcoin remains under UK government control while the legal questions play out.
What this means
For the victims, the ruling is a clear setback. Being pushed into a Chinese law framework could limit their claims to something closer to their original losses rather than the coins’ current value.
For the UK Treasury, the stakes are obvious. If the victims’ claims are capped near the roughly £600 million they lost, the remaining billions could stay with the state.
The appeal is the next major checkpoint to watch. A reversal would reopen the door to English law claims and potentially return a larger slice of the Bitcoin’s value to defrauded investors.
The upcoming expert evidence on Chinese law will matter too. How Chinese property law treats crypto, and its appreciation, will shape what victims can realistically recover even if the current ruling stands.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.