As ZachXBT continued his career as a cryptocurrency gatekeeper, he also kept his mask firmly in place. He appears online only as his avatar, something like a cartoon platypus in a detective trench coat or sometimes a hoodie. To avoid retaliation from his many enemies in the world of cryptocriminals and fraudsters, he has never shown his face in public or revealed his real name or exact age, and will only speak to WIRED on the condition that I do not attempt to dig up any identifying information.
McGill says that during some of ZachXBT’s first conference calls, he not only kept his camera turned off, but even used a voice-changing app, sometimes sounding like a high-pitched “South Park character,” as McGill put it, or on other occasions deepening the tone of his voice until it reminded him of something from a horror movie. “It was very strange at first,” says McGill, who at the time worked at cryptocurrency tracking company TRM Labs. “But I respected his privacy because this anonymous guy did a really great job.”
ZachXBT exposes so many cryptocurrency scams and thefts almost every week, often acting much faster than law enforcement, says Nick Bax, cryptocurrency researcher and founder of Five I’s, that Bax has He half-jokingly wondered if he was some kind of bot.
“He’s a machine,” Bax says.
As part of last year’s investigation, during which they collaborated to track the theft of $60 million from a crypto project called AnubisDAO in 2021, Bax provided ZachXBT with a list of 500 transactions made on Saturday evening, each of which required manual analysis along with all of its connected blockchain addresses. “I thought it would take him at least a few days,” Bax says. Instead, early the next afternoon, ZachXBT reviewed each transaction and identified which one was related to the theft. “I was shocked,” Bax says. “He definitely had to sit at a computer for 12 hours straight.”
Many of the results of ZachXBT’s investigations are blunt sent to his account on X. However, over time, his findings have attracted more and more attention from law enforcement agencies – several of which he now frequently shares his discoveries with before publication. The result was real and growing consequences for the purposes of this detective work. “As Zach grew, there were financial and legal ramifications,” says Taylor Monahan, a security researcher at crypto firm MetaMask and one of ZachXBT’s closest collaborators on investigations including the theft of $243 million. “If Zach posts a thread about someone now and it’s good, that person will be arrested.”
From victim to whistleblower
So how did ZachXBT manage to outrun and track down even law enforcement cryptocurrency investigators, despite a lack of formal training and organizational support? Even he’s not entirely sure. “That’s a difficult question. I don’t know why I’m good,” ZachXBT tells WIRED in a phone interview. He attributes this to his willingness to work around the clock – cryptocurrency markets never close, after all – and his knowledge of analyzing cryptocurrency blockchains that comes from years of sifting through these massive transaction ledgers. “The more you look at blockchain, like how you eat, sleep and breathe, it starts to make more sense over time,” he says. “You can just start to see these connections. I can look in his wallet, I can profile him and within seconds I can tell if he’s a bad actor.”
ZachXBT claims that his knowledge of blockchains comes from his years of experience as a cryptocurrency enthusiast and trader, as well as being a victim of some of the cryptocurrency economy’s many traps for unwary investors. He says that around 2017, he naively purchased thousands of dollars worth of crypto tokens, which ultimately lost value – often due to a so-called “rug pull” when the creator of the crypto token sells his shares and all other investors are left with a worthless asset. “I was buying it like, ‘This is going to change the world.’ I just kept it and never sold it,” ZachXBT says. As a result, he says, “I was the one who was cheated.”