When a shell company called Laurore Ltd. filed a roughly $436 million position in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) exchange-traded fund — its first and only filing — with a Hong Kong address and phone number, the crypto community took notice and a social media frenzy began.
What made it even more interesting is that it listed “Zhang Hui” as director of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a name as common in China as “John Smith” in the West, according to an X post by ProCap’s CIO, Jeff Park.
In fact, CoinDesk found over 100 Zhang Huis listed as directors of various companies in the Hong Kong Company Registry.
This sparked a week of speculation about potential Chinese capital entering the crypto market via spot bitcoin purchases exchange-traded funds.
“It smacks of capital flight to me,” Park said in his post. Even Bloomberg’s ETF analysts weighed in, with James Seyffart responding to the post: “I spent almost an hour figuring this out earlier this morning, got absolutely nowhere.”
The mystery became even more intriguing when CoinDesk visited the Hong Kong address listed in Laurore’s SEC filing.
The building directory showed that the suite was occupied by Avecamour Advice Ltd and not Laurore. Furthermore, Laurore, which owns the IBIT shares, is not registered in Hong Kong.
After CoinDesk’s attempts to find someone at Laurore for comment, the company has finally broken its silence. A spokesman said the company’s owner prefers to keep a low profile without revealing further details.
But there are still more questions than answers.
Who is Avecamour and what is the connection between the two companies? And how does the mysterious “Zhang Hui” fit into all this?
‘Private companies’
CoinDesk searched through company filings, which showed that Avecamour Advice is 100% owned by Avecamour Ltd., a British Virgin Islands entity.
Hong Kong Company Registry records show that Zhang Hui, with a matching Mainland China passport prefix, is also the sole director listed for Avecamour Advice, which was incorporated in March 2025. No other public details of Avecamour or its stakeholders could be found.
Laurore’s spokesperson told CoinDesk that “the owner of Laurore is also a director of Avecamour,” implying that Zhang Hui is the owner of the mysterious company.
However, the spokesman did not provide more details about Zhang Hui or any of the companies.
“Our principal prefers to keep a low profile and this position [in IBIT] is simply a reflection of their personal investment beliefs,” the spokesperson said.
Indeed, 13F filings identify reporting agents but do not require disclosure of the ultimate beneficial owners. Large investors often hold positions through multiple legal vehicles for structuring, custody or privacy reasons.
“As these are private companies, we do not disclose further ownership details,” the spokesman said.
What does it all mean?
If it is “capital flight” in this context, it would mean funds moving out of mainland China into offshore assets via Hong Kong, such as US-listed bitcoin ETFs, potentially to diversify wealth beyond the reach of domestic capital controls.
However, it could also simply mean that Laurore is just part of a cluster of funds or family offices under the umbrella of a larger Hong Kong-based entity that invests in bitcoin ETFs. If so, it would mean that due to low liquidity and high fees of HKEX-listed bitcoin ETFs, a Hong Kong-based fund chose to allocate to the US-listed IBIT, which offers much greater liquidity and lower costs for institutional investors to park their capital.
But for now, the identity of Laurore and its mysterious principal remains as clear as bitcoin’s Satoshi Nakamoto.
Read more: US BTC ETF inflows dwarf Hong Kong’s as local investors stick to equities
