Recently, I came across a pretty interesting story about a mysterious Hong Kong investor holding a $436 million position in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) through a shell company, Laurore Ltd.

At first, social media absolutely blew up. A company named Laurore filed for this massive position for the first time, with the address and phone number pointing to Hong Kong, which immediately drew attention from the crypto community. Even more interestingly, the director named in the SEC filing is Zhang Hui—an otherwise very common name in Hong Kong. CoinDesk checked the Hong Kong Companies Registry and found that there are more than 100 directors named Zhang Hui alone.

This kicked off a wave of speculation: could it be that Chinese capital is entering the crypto market through a Bitcoin spot ETF? ProCap Chief Investment Officer Jeff Park said plainly on Twitter: “This smells like capital flight.” Even Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart was pulled in—he said he spent nearly an hour trying to figure it out but still couldn’t.

When CoinDesk reporters visited the Hong Kong address listed in Laurore’s SEC filing in person, the situation became even more confusing. The building directory showed that the office was actually occupied by Avecamour Advice Ltd, and Laurore itself was not even registered as being established in Hong Kong.

In response to CoinDesk’s follow-up questions, Laurore finally broke its silence. A spokesperson said the owners prefer to stay low-key, and that this IBIT investment only reflects the personal investment beliefs of the individual. But what does that mean?

Through company registration filings, the reporters found that Avecamour Advice is fully controlled by Avecamour Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands. Zhang Hui (whose passport prefix matches that of mainland China passports) is the sole director of Avecamour Advice, which was just registered in March 2025. Laurore’s spokesperson hinted that Zhang Hui is the owner of this mysterious company, but refused to provide any more details.

From an investment perspective, there are two possible explanations. One is that funds flow out of mainland China through Hong Kong into offshore assets (such as U.S.-listed Bitcoin ETFs), possibly for wealth diversification or to avoid capital controls. The other is that this is simply part of a Hong Kong fund or a family office choosing to allocate to a more liquid, lower-fee U.S. IBIT product.

But so far, the true identity of Laurore and its mysterious responsible party still remains as elusive as Satoshi Nakamoto, full of suspense.

By the way, I’ve also recently noticed another interesting phenomenon. Bitmine Immersion Technologies has rapidly transformed from a mining company into a leveraged Ethereum treasury; in six months, its share count doubled and it raised more than $10 billion in financing. It now holds 4.87 million ETH, making it the largest corporate Ethereum holder. Their average cost is $2,206 per ETH. Although the quarterly report shows a net loss of $3.8 billion, this is mainly due to fair value accounting treatment and losses on derivatives—not actual losses on Ethereum itself. Their operational focus has shifted to the staking business; quarterly revenue of $11 million is basically all from this segment, but management expenses have surged to $75 million—this mismatch between costs and revenue is definitely worth paying attention to.