TIANJIN PROSECUTORS ASK A CHINESE COURT TO CONFISCATE 61,896 BITCOIN TIED TO ZHIMIN QIAN — THE COURT TOOK THE CASE SEPTEMBER 28, TWO WEEKS BEFORE LONDON RULED CHINESE LAW GOVERNS — THE KEYS ARE STILL IN ENGLAND
On October 13, 2026, the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in China published a notice. Prosecutors from the Second Branch of the Tianjin People’s Procuratorate want to confiscate 61,896.41552945 bitcoin tied to Zhimin Qian, according to the Chinese outlet The Paper, which reported the notice on October 14. The list also covers about 72,746 coins each of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin SV, about 3.6 million XRP, cash, jewelry, and Dogecoin that UK authorities have already sold into an interest-bearing account.
Look at the dates. The court accepted the application on September 28. On October 12, a High Court judge in London, Mr Justice Turner, ruled that Chinese law, not English law, decides whether Qian’s victims own any of the coins. We covered that ruling on October 13. The Chinese notice went up the next day. Chinese prosecutors had already asked a Chinese court for the coins two weeks before London told the victims their rights would be judged under Chinese law.
Prosecutors say Qian sold fake wealth products from April 2014 to August 2017, raising more than 40.378 billion yuan from more than 102,000 investors, who lost more than 19.977 billion yuan. Victims can sign up as interested parties through a court WeChat mini-program, The Paper reports, and those who do not can still get refunds from whatever is recovered. The court will hear the case after a six-month notice period. Decrypt reports Chinese rules allow confiscation without the suspect present because Qian is a fugitive. She is serving 11 years and eight months in a British prison.
A Chinese court can order a confiscation. It cannot sign a transaction. These coins move when whoever holds the keys moves them, and since the Metropolitan Police raid in 2018, that is the British state. Decrypt, citing the Financial Times, reports UK officials privately asked whether the coins could help cover a gap in public finances. So more than 102,000 victims now wait on two governments, and the one that holds the keys has the last word. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $81,645.