When a shell company called Laurore Ltd. filed a position of around $436 million in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) exchange-traded fund (its first and only filing) by listing a Hong Kong address and phone number, the crypto community took notice and started a social media frenzy.
What made it even more interesting is that it listed “Zhang Hui” as a director in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, a name as common in China as “John Smith” in the West, according to an X post by ProCap CIO Jeff Park.
In fact, CoinDesk found more than 100 Zhang Huis listed as directors of different companies in the Hong Kong Companies Registry.
This sparked a week of speculation about the possible entry of Chinese capital into the cryptocurrency market through spot purchases of bitcoins. exchange-traded funds.
“It smells like capital flight to me,” Park said in his post. Even Bloomberg ETF analysts weighed in, with James Seyffart responding to the post: “I spent almost an hour trying to figure this out this morning, got nowhere.”
The mystery became even more intriguing when CoinDesk visited the Hong Kong address listed in Laurore’s SEC filing.
The building directory showed the suite was occupied by Avecamour Advice Ltd and not Laurore. Furthermore, Laurore, which owns IBIT shares, is not incorporated in Hong Kong.
After CoinDesk’s attempts to find someone at Laurore to comment, the company finally broke its silence. A spokesperson said the company 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 corporate documents, which showed that Avecamour Advice is wholly owned by Avecamour Ltd., a British Virgin Islands entity.
Records from the Hong Kong Registrar of Companies show that Zhang Hui, with a matching mainland Chinese passport prefix, is also the only director listed in Avecamour Advice, which was incorporated in March 2025. No other public details could be found about Avecamour or its stakeholders.
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 spokesperson did not provide further details about Zhang Hui or any of the companies.
“Our director prefers to keep a low profile, and this position [in IBIT] “It is simply a reflection of your personal investment conviction,” the spokesperson said.
In fact, 13F filings identify reporting managers, but do not require disclosure of 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 details about ownership,” the spokesperson said.
What does all this mean?
If this is “capital flight,” in this context, it would mean funds leaving mainland China for 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 group of funds or family offices, under the umbrella of a larger Hong Kong-based entity that invests in bitcoin ETFs. If so, it would imply that, due to the low liquidity and high fees of HKEX-listed bitcoin ETFs, a Hong Kong-based fund opted to make investments in 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 her mysterious director remains as clear as that of bitcoin’s Satoshi Nakamoto.
Read more: US BTC ETF inflows eclipse Hong Kong as local investors snap up shares
