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I have $7B in Bitcoin – renowned hacker sparks debate over his BTC holding

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16
Mar

Source: StunningArt

  • An infamous hacker who traded his black hat for a white one has claimed that he owns $7 billion in Bitcoin which he minted close to a decade ago.
  • He says that he still works a 9-5 job as he loves what he does and he derives satisfaction from knowing that he is helping people feel safer on the Internet.

If you had $7 billion in your bank account, would you continue working a 9-5 job, or would you be somewhere on a beach sipping Mai Tais? For one renowned hacker, he chose the former and he still goes to work from Monday to Friday, despite having a $7 billion Bitcoin fortune? But does he really have that much money – the crypto community has been on a heated debate since the revelation.

Known popularly as Gummo, the hacker took an interview on Soft White Underbelly, a popular YouTube channel with over 3 million subscribers.

While he talked about a whole host of issues, from how technology has ruined our lives today to what got him into hacking, it’s his revelation that he owns BTC worth $7 billion that has gotten people talking the most.

Gummo has been a hacker for over three decades. He had a rough upbringing and dropped out of eighth grade before deciding to pursue computer programming. Initially, he applied his skills for nefarious activities, hacking into systems such as ATMs to survive.

In a previous interview with the same YouTube channel a year ago, he revealed that he changed from being a black hat hacker to a white hat after he was caught selling stolen code worth $10 million. He was given the choice to either help the developers of the company he had attacked or end up in prison.

Responding to why he still does his 9-5 job despite having quite a stash of BTC, Gummo replied:

I’m quite wealthy. I do not have to work if I don’t choose to. I have over $7 billion worth of Bitcoin.

At Bitcoin’s current price of around $39,000, this would imply he holds close to 180,000 BTC, making him one of the biggest individual owners of the top cryptocurrency.

If he indeed does own $7 billion worth of BTC, it would place him in the top 350 richest people on the planet, making him wealthier than fashion mogul Ralph Lauren, Sequoia Capital and VC guru Douglas Leone, and Roman Abramovich, the embattled Russian owner of Chelsea Football Club.

Related: This hacker got to Twitter and added Ethereum tipping option, on the same day Jack Dorsey left

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