A London Court Didn't Decide Who Owns 61,000 Seized Bitcoin

A London court has ruled that Chinese law governs fraud victims' claims to 61,000 bitcoin seized by the Metropolitan Police, because the scheme and the losses occurred in China. The ruling does not decide who owns the bitcoin. It decides which country's law gets to answer that question — a distinction several reports blurred.

The bitcoin is worth about £3.8 billion ($5 billion) at current prices, according to the October 2026 report of the ruling. The two figures come from different sources and different dates.

Zhimin Qian, also known as Yadi Zhang, pleaded guilty to defrauding more than 128,000 investors through a Ponzi scheme between 2014 and 2017, converting the proceeds into bitcoin and fleeing to Britain in 2017. The investigation that followed produced what is believed to be the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world. Malaysian national Seng Hok Ling pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to entering into a money laundering arrangement on or before 23 April 2024.

What the court settled is narrower than ownership. By routing the victims' claims through Chinese law, the decision narrows their path to recovery and increases the likelihood the British government retains most of the seized bitcoin. Victims' lawyers are appealing. The Crown Prosecution Service will evaluate ownership claims.

The practical stakes are whether billions in seized crypto flow to fraud victims or stay with the UK government. The legal stakes are precedential: the case tests how cross-border crypto forfeiture resolves competing claims when the crime and the victims sit in one jurisdiction and the assets are seized in another.

Three questions remain open. Whether the victims' appeal overturns the choice-of-law ruling. How the Crown Prosecution Service ultimately allocates or disposes of the bitcoin. And whether this ruling becomes a template for other cross-border crypto forfeiture disputes. Until those are answered, the accurate description of today's outcome is procedural, not final: the court picked a legal system, not a winner.