How did the great detective ZachXBT become skilled at solving numerous tricky cases?

Translator: Jiahua, ChainCacther

In 2018, a guy lost $15,000 after his wallet was hacked. No flashy degrees. No prominent connections. No endorsements from VC funds or three-letter government agencies. Just an ordinary retail investor, like thousands of others, who got scammed during the ICO boom.

Most people would likely leave the cryptocurrency space forever, filled with anger.

This guy opened a blockchain explorer and started tracing where his money went.

Seven years later, he managed to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen funds, led to the arrests of scammers spread across multiple continents, exposed state-sponsored hacking operations from North Korea, and made every wrongdoer in the industry think twice before transferring even $1 on-chain.

His name? No one knows. His true identity? Never revealed. His avatar? A cartoon platypus in a trench coat.

This is the story of ZachXBT, the most formidable investigator in the cryptocurrency field, which also explains why his next report could become the biggest bombshell the industry has ever seen.

From Victim to Vigilante

ZachXBT's origin story reads like something out of a comic book.

He entered the crypto space around 2017, just as the ICO craze was peaking. Like most retail investors at that time, he poured money into hype projects that promised to change the world but delivered nothing. Exit scams, tokens with no substance, trash projects endorsed by influencers. The usual playbook.

But the real turning point came in 2018. His Electrum wallet was hacked. About $15,000 vanished. For a retail investor, that was no small change. It was real money. A loss that could either make you walk away for good or become obsessed.

He chose obsession.

He began to teach himself how to read on-chain data. Transaction flows, wallet clusters, mixer patterns, exchange deposits. He combined this with old-school OSINT (Open Source Intelligence), scouring Twitter, Discord, Telegram, Instagram, and even court records to build profiles on the people behind the wallets.

By 2020, he started sharing his findings publicly on X. Initially, it was just brief tweets. Phishing scams, influencer pump-and-dump schemes, small-time crooks. Nothing that would make the mainstream headlines.

Then the tweets got longer. The evidence more substantial. The targets more powerful.

The self-proclaimed detective of cryptocurrency was born.

Talking Achievements

This is precisely where ZachXBT differs from all the other "crypto detectives" on the internet. The accusations are not based on speculation or gut feelings. This is forensic-level, evidence-backed work that directly leads to real-world consequences.

Some highlights:

Directly recovered over $210 million. This is the amount tracked and returned to victims, not a theoretical number. Additionally, there have been over $225 million in indirect seizures related to his investigations.

$243 million Bitcoin heist (2024). This was utterly absurd. When ZachXBT noticed suspicious cash-out activity on-chain, he was sitting in an airport. He tracked the funds, pinpointed three suspects through their lavish social media spending (because, of course, they wanted to show off), assisted law enforcement in arresting two of them, and facilitated seizures of over $79 million within weeks. All while most people were scrolling Instagram waiting for their boarding call.

Exposed the Lazarus Group. He connected North Korea's notorious state-sponsored hacking group to over 25 independent hacks worth more than $200 million, also exposing their infiltration of Web3 development teams. This was national-level intelligence work done by an anonymous individual with a laptop.

BAYC phishing gang (2022). Tracked over $2.5 million stolen through fake Bored Ape websites. Subsequently, French authorities arrested five people.

Took down influencers. Lark Davis (over $1.2 million in undisclosed earnings). Logan Paul was involved in Elongate, Ethereum Max, and DinkDoink incidents. BitBoy Crypto's paid promotion of outright scams. ZachXBT not only named these individuals but also showcased wallet trajectories, transaction receipts, and fund flows, accurately proving what was happening.

The Machi Big Brother case. He accused someone of misappropriating over $17 million from Formosa Financial. The subject sued him for defamation. The crypto community crowdfunded over $1 million for ZachXBT's legal defense. The lawsuit was dropped.

Government-related theft case (January 2026). He tracked over $40 million stolen from a wallet seized by the U.S. government, eventually tracing it back to the son of a contractor executive responsible for the seized cryptocurrency. Even those guarding the seized funds could not escape his investigation.

This list goes on. The $70 million Pixelmon abuse case. DeGods NFT recovery. Coinbase impersonation gang. Hardware wallet scams. The number of cases he has been involved in surpasses that of most law enforcement cyber crime units.

Why He’s More Important Than You Realize

Cryptocurrency has regulatory issues. This is well known. Government agencies are slow to react, fighting amongst themselves, and often clueless about how blockchain technology actually works. Exchanges have conflicts of interest. Project teams are both referees and players.

In this vacuum, an anonymous investigator emerged, accomplishing work worth billions that companies and federal agencies either couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
ZachXBT works with the FBI, Secret Service, and French cyber police, but he does not work for any of them. He is completely independent. This independence is precisely what makes him effective. He releases information without needing approval. He has no legal department to water down his findings. He is not accountable to shareholders or political appointees.

He is only accountable to the blockchain. Data is data.

This is important because the deterrent effect is real. Scammers now know that moving stolen funds is not the end of the story. It may be the beginning of a public investigation, culminating in their real names, transaction records, and suspect photos going viral across crypto Twitter.

Before ZachXBT appeared, the calculations of cryptocurrency scammers were simple: steal money, launder through mixers, cash out, and disappear. Now, there’s a significant chance that a cartoon platypus will track every dollar, publish evidence to nearly a million followers, and hand over the case files to law enforcement.

This has changed behavioral patterns. This is real influence.

The Business Model of Becoming Batman in Crypto

This is what makes ZachXBT even more interesting. He does not have fund backing. He does not run a company. For years, he has worked almost entirely for free.

His funding comes from community donations (approximately $1.3 million since 2021), occasional bounties, and crowdfunding during crises like defamation lawsuits. In 2024, due to increased demand, he stopped purely free work, which is completely understandable considering the number of cases he handles.

He is also an advisor to Paradigm, one of the largest crypto venture funds, and recently (November 2025) collaborated with BNB Chain on proactive security reporting. These relationships give him resources and influence while not compromising his independence.

But at the core of his operation remains one person, one laptop, and one internet connection, doing work that entire departments of major institutions find hard to replicate.

February 26: The Next Bombshell

Now, let’s look at what’s currently happening.

On February 23, 2026, ZachXBT posted this message:

“Breaking news: A major investigation will be released on February 26, involving one of the most profitable companies in the crypto field, with multiple employees abusing internal data for insider trading over an extended period.”

This post has already garnered millions of views. Thousands of replies. Speculation is running rampant.

The crypto community is trying to figure out which company he is talking about. Rumors point to a top exchange or a large DeFi or trading platform, possibly one of the most profitable entities in the entire industry. Prediction markets around this leak have already opened.

And the absurdity that perfectly captures the situation in this industry is that people are apparently trying to insider trade on ZachXBT's insider trading investigation. He has been making jokes about this ironic situation in the replies.

Think about it. This person is about to expose a major company’s employees for using internal data to front-run trades, and people are trying to front-run his report on the front-running. The crypto world really hasn’t changed at all.

But ZachXBT’s track record suggests this won’t be some vague accusation. When he says he has an investigation, he has wallet addresses, timestamps, transaction flows, and connections. It’s always the case.

If this investigation hits as hard as his previous work, we may see executives resign, regulatory scrutiny, criminal referrals, and a serious trust crisis faced by whatever company he has spotlighted.

A Broader Perspective

ZachXBT represents something that the crypto industry is extremely eager for yet rarely produces: permissionless accountability.

He didn’t wait for the SEC to figure out blockchain analytics. He didn’t wait for exchanges to self-regulate. He didn’t wait for VC-backed security companies to build tools and charge enterprise subscriptions. He simply started working publicly, freely, and with ironclad evidence.

In an industry that constantly talks about decentralization and trustlessness, ZachXBT is as close to a truly effective decentralized law enforcement mechanism as it gets. One person, existing outside all institutions, using only publicly available data and relentless spirit to hold the powerful accountable.

The crypto space has never lacked heroes and villains. Most heroes are the founders of protocols or investors who timed their trades perfectly. ZachXBT is different. He is a hero because he chooses to protect people rather than profit from them.

He turned a $15,000 loss into a mission, recovering hundreds of millions for others.

And on February 26, he is about to remind the entire industry why that cartoon platypus is the last person you want investigating your company.

Stay tuned.

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