Author: StarPlatinum
Compiled by: Tim, PANews
He bought crypto assets in 2018 and then got scammed, losing over $15,000.
So he began to trace through blockchain explorers to find out what happened.
Today, he has become one of the most formidable on-chain detectives in the crypto space.
So, who exactly is ZachXBT?
Before becoming a detective, ZachXBT was just an ordinary retail investor: superstitious about project teams and mindlessly rushing into NFTs.
Then, the project team ran away, and he encountered a hacking incident.
In 2018, he lost over $15,000 worth of Ethereum.
After that, he opened Etherscan and began to dig deep into on-chain clues.
He taught himself various blockchain knowledge. By tracing wallet movements through mixers, he infiltrated open-source intelligence circles to gather clues, mapping out the flow of scam funds on paper. He had never studied finance and knew nothing about technology.
With only public tools and time, by May 2021, he finally made some progress.
After exposing the illegal financing of Impact Theory, he then targeted Rogue Society:
15,777 NFTs were minted in an instant, the development team vanished, and ZachXBT tracked the funds,
then locked onto the target wallet, ultimately revealing solid evidence on Discord, forcing the founder to end their hiding journey.
And this was just the beginning.
He uncovered the $70 million Pixelmon scam:
1) Exposed the team for misappropriating startup funds to buy Bored Apes.
2) Then dismantled a phishing gang that stole $2.5 million worth of BAYC NFTs.
3) ZachXBT tracked the related wallet addresses and successfully identified the suspects.
4) French police arrested five individuals involved.
5) The police publicly thanked him for his assistance in solving the case.
But ZachXBT's biggest case occurred in 2022.
A ten-part investigative report on "Maji Brother," where he linked 21 crypto wallets to $37 million in missing funds.
Maji sued him for defamation.
The crypto community raised $1 million to help him defend himself.
ZachXBT stood his ground.
In the end, Maji voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit.
After that, he conducted even deeper tracking.
He traced the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group (the masterminds behind the Ronin and Harmony cross-chain bridge vulnerabilities).
He mapped out the path of $200 million flowing through Tornado, ChipMixer, and several exchanges in Asia.
He has submitted the relevant fund flow diagrams to law enforcement and assisted in freezing the related funds.
ZachXBT does not work for anyone, yet various agencies around the world closely monitor his activities.
The U.S. Secret Service cited his analysis report, and the French cyber police contacted him faster than the police could keep up.
Arkham paid him to identify wallet owners, subsequently recovering over $435 million in stolen funds.
All actions were carried out without revealing his identity.
He has also exposed numerous influencers: BitBoy, Logan Paul, Lark Davis, Kyle Chasse.
He pays no heed to their lawyers or fans, continuously tracking phishing gangs, airdrop cashers, KOLs who scam retail investors, and market manipulators.
In four years, he has released over 200 investigative reports.
In 2025, Paradigm officially announced the appointment of Zach to join the team as a security incident response consultant.
Founder Matt Huang praised him for recovering over $350 million in stolen assets.
PS: Four years later, he still uses a cartoon platypus avatar, maintaining his original intention.
ZachXBT has become an industry benchmark, and his actions have prompted exchanges to amend policies, bringing scammers to justice,
turning on-chain analysis into a blade of justice.
He started with a scam investigation but has built the most trusted reputation in the Web3 world.
The term "crypto detective" refers to him.
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