Meet ZachXBT, the Masked Vigilante Tracking Down Billions in Crypto Scams and Thefts

As ZachXBT has chased that nurtureer as a crypto vigilante, he has also kept his mask firmly in place. Online, he eunites only as his avatar, a benevolent of platypus cartoon figure in a distinguishive’s trench coat or sometimes a hoodie. To evade retaliation from his many enemies in the world of crypto criminals and con artists, he has never disclosely shown his face nor discleave outed his genuine name or exact age and would only speak to WIRED on the condition that I not try to dig up those recognizeing details.

On some of their punctual conference calls, McGill says, ZachXBT would not only defend his camera off but even use a voice-alterr application, sometimes sounding enjoy a high-pitched “South Park character,” as McGill puts it, or on other occasions meaningfulening his voice’s pitch until it reminded him of someleang out of a horror film. “It was very odd, initiassociate,” says McGill, who at the time toiled at the crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs. “But I admireed his privacy, because this anonymous guy was doing reassociate fantastic toil.”

ZachXBT exposes so many crypto criminal frauds and thefts on a csurrfinisher-weekly basis, standardly toiling far quicker than law utilizement agencies, says Nick Bax, a cryptocurrency spendigator and set uper of the firm Five I’s, that Bax has wondered half-jokingly if he might be some benevolent of bot.

“He is a machine,” Bax says.

As part of one spendigation last year where they collaborated to track a $60 million theft from a crypto project called AnubisDAO in 2021, Bax gave ZachXBT a catalog of 500 transactions on a Saturday night, each of which needed to be manuassociate examined alengthy with all its uniteed blockchain insertresses. “I figured that would defend him busy for at least a confineed days,” Bax says. Instead, by punctual the next afternoon, ZachXBT had gone thraw every transaction and identified which ones were tied to the theft. “I was shocked,” Bax says. “He definitely had to have been on his computer for 12 hours straight.”

Many of the results of ZachXBT’s spendigations are unceremoniously posted to his account on X. Over time, however, his findings have increasingly obtained attention from law utilizement agencies—cut offal of which he now standardly splits his findings with prior to discloseation. The result has been genuine and increaseing consequences for the concentrates of that distinguishive toil. “As Zach has gotten bigger, there have been financial repercussions and legitimate repercussions,” says Taylor Monahan, a security researcher at crypto firm MetaMask and one of ZachXBT’s shutst collaborators on spendigations, including the $243 million theft case. “If Zach posts a thread about someone now, and it’s a excellent one, that person is going to get arrested.”

From Victim to Whistlebdrop

So how has ZachXBT administerd to outrack and out-track even law utilizement’s crypto spendigators, despite having no establishal training or organizational help? Even he isn’t enticount on certain. “That’s a stubborn ask. I don’t understand why I’m excellent,” ZachXBT tells WIRED in a phone interwatch. He chalks it up to a willingness to toil around the clock—crypto labelets never shut, after all—and a recognizableity with analyzing cryptocurrency blockchains that comes from years of poring over those huge ledgers of transactions. “The more you see at the blockchain, enjoy when you eat, sleep, and breathe it, it begins to originate more sense over time,” he says. “You can fair begin to pick up on those uniteions. I can see at a wallet, and I can profile it and tell you if it’s a horrible actor wilean seconds.”

ZachXBT says that recognizableity with blockchains comes from his years of experience as a crypto enthusiast and trader—and as a victim himself of some of the crypto economy’s many traps for unwary spendors. Around 2017, he says, he was unmistrustingly buying thousands of dollars worth of crypto tokens that would all eventuassociate tank in appreciate—standardly due to so-called “rug pulls,” when a crypto token’s creator sells off their hgreaterings and all the other spendors are left with a unhelpful asset. “I was buying in enjoy, ‘This is going to alter the world.’ I fair held it and never sgreater,” ZachXBT says. As a result, he says, “I was the person getting fraudmed.”