By Elena Vasquez

London's High Court has ruled that Chinese law, not English law, governs the ownership claims of fraud victims seeking to recover 61,000 Bitcoin seized by British authorities. Justice Mark Turner delivered the judgment on Monday, rejecting arguments for English law or a hybrid of English and Chinese law. The seized Bitcoin currently holds a market value above $5 billion, according to CoinGecko data.

The stakes are considerable. At current prices, the hoard works out to roughly $39,000 per victim across the more than 128,000 investors reportedly affected by the scheme. The fraud itself ran between 2014 and 2017 and was orchestrated by Zhimin Qian; British authorities seized the assets during a money-laundering investigation.

What did the judge actually decide?

Turner anchored his reasoning in where the harm occurred. "The relevant damage occurred in China. The Applicants parted with their money in China," he wrote. "The contractual relationships thereby induced were entered into in China."

The ruling does not decide who owns the Bitcoin. It determines only which legal system will assess that question. The claimants had pressed for English law because it could have allowed them to claim direct ownership of the coins rather than pursue compensation as unsecured creditors. That pathway is now closed, at least pending appeal; the practical difference between owning an asset and standing in a creditor queue is not a technicality, and the judgment leaves the harder question unanswered.

Why does the choice of law matter so much?

Under English law, the victims might have traced their interest directly into the seized Bitcoin and captured its appreciation. Under a creditor-style compensation route, gains from Bitcoin's rise since 2017 could flow elsewhere. In March, victims challenged a proposed compensation arrangement tied to a Chinese redress scheme, arguing it could leave British authorities with much of the appreciation. Prosecutors, for their part, previously argued that certain claims could let a smaller group of victims and litigation funders recover more than their actual losses — a caveat worth weighing against any estimate of victim recovery.

Law firm Fieldfisher, which represents claimants, is pursuing an appeal, according to a Financial Times report. Candey, another firm, has represented about 5,700 victims in earlier stages of the litigation.

What happens next?

The case stays before the High Court in London rather than transferring to a Chinese court. The next stage will involve expert evidence on Chinese law to determine whether the victims can establish ownership interests in the seized assets. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed to the FT that a further hearing will examine how Chinese law applies and whether any victim can establish an interest.

The takeaway in plain terms: the victims have not lost the Bitcoin, but they have lost the legal framework that gave them their strongest claim to it. Whether Chinese property law can carry an ownership interest through a UK seizure remains untested, and the expert-evidence phase will likely run months before any distribution question is resolved.