A former blackhat hacker who goes by the identify Gummo on-line claims to have amassed round $7 billion price of Bitcoin (BTC).
Regardless of a flood of optimistic feedback and posts regarding his interviews with the Tender White Underbelly YouTube channel — which has 3.18 million subscribers — details about Gummo is scarce elsewhere. This might both be by design or recommend that a big pinch of salt could also be required when listening to his extravagant claims.
He mentioned that he has been working within the area for greater than 30 years. Whereas he began hacking for illicit causes and received caught by authorities, he has since turned to do good work — due to the help and counsel of his spouse — akin to risk looking, cybersecurity and developer consulting.
The newest feedback got here as a part of a follow-up interview printed on Saturday after the preliminary dialogue occurred in late 2020. In the course of the first video, Gummo acknowledged that he constructed 4 supercomputers to mine Bitcoin when it was priced at round $200-300 again in 2013, and generated greater than 80,000 BTC inside a yr and a half.
In response to his claims, he has now amassed roughly 179,000 BTC. If his holdings are calculated at present costs, that will rank him at across the 369th richest particular person globally, in response to Forbes’ 2021 world’s billionaires record:
“I’m fairly rich. Yeah, I should not have to work if I don’t select to. I’ve over seven billion {dollars} price of Bitcoin. ”
nothing will impede the simplicity & decentralized future #Bitcoin
.
🙂— Gummo (@GummoXXX) March 8, 2022
Gummo acknowledged that his present work in hacking shouldn’t be motivated by the will to have a job or cash, however by serving to the little man, as he emphasised the significance of selecting to do the appropriate factor and defend individuals from on-line evil.
“Figuring out that I‘m stopping somebody’s grandmother from being a sufferer of some type of cyber extortion scheme, that’s the factor I stand up for every day and people are the issues that inspire me at present,” he mentioned.
Talking on the darkish facet of technological development, Gummo warned that the hacking has shortly developed from “having limitless javascript pop-ups” humorously spam PCs to the weaponization of information and software program in opposition to individuals:
“The panorama is rising darker and extra sinister as extra individuals want to search their wealth. Whether or not it’s cryptocurrency theft or conventional theft of banking techniques.”
“The truth that governments now are eager to start a battle on simply the concept of software program being deployed is sort of horrifying and sadly that might be society’s new actuality,” he added.
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Trying on the response to each interviews, it seems Gummo is shortly changing into a beloved determine attributable to his again story, which features a tough upbringing, the lack of family members and a major shift from the darkish facet of hacking to serving to individuals on-line.
The newest video has 14,000 likes up to now and there’s an nearly limitless quantity of optimistic suggestions for the determine, whereas the primary video has 144,000 likes and the identical sentiment within the feedback.
“This man has impressed me to pursue cybersecurity with good intent. I‘m a broke instructor, LOVE instructing as a result of it helps college students so by no means centered on the paycheck. Now too outdated to show. Thought-about cybersecurity as a brand new profession to pay the payments, however Gummo has given extra which means to this profession, will now pursue the profession to make the world a greater place too. Thanks, Gummo,” wrote YouTube consumer Zim Petrichor.
Consumer quicklern818 acknowledged that: “I don‘t assume we’re ever going to see this man once more, and in a means, I really feel that‘s acceptable — he is like a guardian angel, working behind the scenes and all the time watching. Sending like to him and his household, and a thanks for all of his exhausting work.”
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