In November 2021, American police officers surrounded a lakeside mansion in Georgia.
In the basement, they found a safe.
Inside, there was $661,000 in cash, gold bars and a jar of Cheetos.
The pot held 15 BILLION REALS in Bitcoin
To understand how this fortune ended up there, we need to meet James Zhong - the owner of the mansion.
A typical nerd, he loved to scour obscure online forums.
One day in 2009, a post caught his attention.
8 years later, James would become one of Bitcoin's biggest whales.
Stunned, Zhong mined a few thousand BTC at home. To see what he could do.
He had just entered college with almost perfect grades on the entrance exam.
As any 18-19 year old would do, he spent a lot of his BTC on parties.
Alcohol, hallucinogens, and harder things.
Ironically, James' addiction made him even richer.
For convenience, he started buying his powder on a website called Silk Road.
The biggest bitcoiner marketplace at the time.
One fine day, when he went to withdraw BTC from the website, our protagonist came across something strange...
The website was slow.
Impatient, James strafed the "loot" button with the mouse 😤
When he went to check his wallet, he saw that he had received DOUBLE the BALANCE that he actually had to withdraw 😮
He rubbed his eyes. He checked. And boom.
He had met the real-life "Klapaucius."
Silk Road had a vulnerability that allowed the user to exploit a second function while the program was performing another task.
In this case, “spend double bitcoin”.
The next few days were the happiest of Zhonginho's life ☺️
It drained ~8% of the site's bookings😱
Afterwards, he reported the bug to the owner of Silk Road, and received a few more coins as a gift.
He sent 40,000 BTC to one address, and 10,000 to another, where they rested for almost a decade.
James Zhong, aged 22, was now one of the biggest Bitcoin holders on the planet 👑
What would you do if you had BTC saved? 🤔💭
James chose to cause on the net.
I bet many of you would opt for the same.
He pretended to be an “asset manager” on Bitcointalk, and built a legendary persona, which would go down in history.
His name there was “LOADED”
robbery was in 2012.
Zhong's coins were worth $1 million. He entered college "with his life sorted out."
But #BTC rose from $10 to $1000 between '12 and '14 📈
When he graduated at 24, his coins were worth +U$30M.
He bought a house, a car and started to pay for the "colleagues" party.
Until now, he had only spent the BTC he earned mining.
If he continued like this, he probably would never have been caught.
But, intoxicated by euphoria, he made a mistake...
... and planted the seeds of ruin, when it was going through its 3rd boom cycle, in 2017.
At the height of the #Bitcoin "civil war", LOADED got carried away on Bitcointalk.
Challenged Roger Ver in a $20M bet, BTC vs. BCash.
To prove his seriousness, he signed a message with the key to a wallet that had $44M in BTC.
But then, on-chain "rats" entered the scene...
... and soon linked the wallet to the infamous 1DkyBEK address...
... known to be related to the Silk Road drainage years earlier.
🫥 After this revelation, LOADED disappeared from the forum. And she never posted again.
He knew he had messed up.
And he seemed to already sense the worst.
The bull of 2017 came. James went into "heir" mode.
The #BTC he had mined at $10 was now worth $10,000.
He bought several Lambos, rented yachts, traveled even more, and invested almost $10M in real estate.
The ostentation caught attention.
And then, one fateful night, in 2019...
James' house was robbed.
They took US$400K in cash.
The broken windows scared our Bitcoin tycoon.
He called the police. A case was opened.
Inconclusive investigations.
The thief was never caught.
But the case caught the attention of American revenue...
After all, who keeps $400k in cash at home?!
They asked for browsing records from Jaminho’s ISP 👀
They mapped their wallets.
And eventually, they discovered the connection that was raised on Bitcointalk years earlier:
between LOADED wallets... and the original Silk Road h4cker 🫢
James never sold any of the BTC stolen from Silk Road.
The site owner even thanked him for reporting the bug.
I would remain free if it weren't for that message and that bet in 2017.
Or, thinking about it, maybe it was just a matter of time before he got caught 🤔