The UK High Court has ruled that Chinese law, rather than English law, governs the property claims over more than 61,000 bitcoins seized from ringleader Qian Zhimin. The court sided with the UK Crown Prosecution Service and the company's litigation receivers, rejecting the victims' legal team's push to apply English law.
This decision has a direct impact on the roughly 16,000 Chinese investors involved in the UK recovery proceedings. When Qian accumulated these bitcoins in 2014, the average price was roughly 2,815 RMB each, compared to around 560,000 RMB today—a nearly 200-fold increase. Under the framework of Chinese law regarding illegal fundraising, victims are likely only eligible to recover their original principal and statutory interest, effectively shutting them out of the astronomical appreciation gains.
The ruling sets a critical precedent for cross-border cryptocurrency recovery. Even when illicit crypto stashes are seized overseas, foreign courts are increasingly deferring to the legal systems of the jurisdiction where the underlying fraud took place, leaving little room for investors to capitalize on overseas legal arbitrage.
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