BlockBeats News, November 16th. According to Caixin's report, from 2014 to 2017, Qian Zhimin used the name of Blue Sky Ge Rui to launch ten "zero-risk, high-return" "financial products" such as "Blue Sky Fund I," "Blue Sky Fund II," and "Yield with Coin." Through holding promotion events and developing downlines in a "pyramid scheme"-like manner, he enticed the public to invest with high interest rates. In about four years, the cumulative non-repayable amount reached over 40 billion RMB, affecting nearly 130,000 people. Out of these funds, 34 billion RMB was used to redeem early products' returns, tens of billions were siphoned off for Qian Zhimin and his co-conspirators' use, with a significant amount used by Qian Zhimin to purchase cryptocurrency.
From a UK court, it was learned that in June 2014, Qian Zhimin instructed his "front person" to open an account for him on the cryptocurrency exchange platform Huobi using investor funds, mobilizing 180 million RMB to purchase 100,250 bitcoins. Subsequently, the account's bitcoin holdings increased to 143,951 bitcoins. Between January and June 2017, she again used over 468 million RMB of investor funds to purchase 51,000 bitcoins through over-the-counter trading. Thus, Qian Zhimin accumulated a total of 194,951 bitcoins.
Qian Zhimin's defense lawyer stated that she first learned about Bitcoin in 2012 and "her ambition was to one day hold 210,000 bitcoins, accounting for 1% of the total Bitcoin supply." She almost achieved this goal. The defense lawyer also mentioned that Qian Zhimin's average purchase price for Bitcoin on Huobi was 2,815 RMB per bitcoin (unknown statistical basis). However, on the day of her sentencing in the UK, the price of Bitcoin had surged 266 times to 750,000 RMB per bitcoin.



