From Rug Pull Victim to Crypto’s Most Feared Investigator — The Story of ZachXBT

He bought Crypto in 2017 and got scammed.

Lost over $15,000.

Started reading block explorers to understand what happened.

Today he’s the most feared crypto investigator.

Who is ZachXBT?

Before becoming a detective, Zach was just another retail investor.

He trusted projects, aped into NFT collections.

Then came the rug pulls.
Then came the hack.

In 2018, he lost over $15k in ETH.

So he opened Etherscan and started digging.

He learned alone.

Tracked wallets through mixers.
Joined OSINT circles.

Mapped out scam flows on paper.

He never studied finance. 
Never worked in tech.

Just used public tools and a lot of time.

By May 2021, he had enough.

His first case exposed a shady raise by “Impact Theory.”

Then came Rogue Society:
15,777 NFTs minted. 

Devs disappeared and Zach followed the money.

Tracked the wallets, posted Discord receipts.

The founder came out of hiding.

And that was just the beginning.

He uncovered the $70M Pixelmon disaster.

Exposed how the team used mint funds to buy Bored Apes.

Then dismantled a phishing ring that stole $2.5M in BAYC NFTs

Zach mapped the wallets and found the scammers

5 were arrested in France

The police thanked him publicly

But his biggest case came in 2022.

A 10 part report on Machi Big Brother.

He linked 21 wallets to $37M in missing funds.

Machi sued him for defamation.

The crypto community raised $1M for Zach’s defense.

He didn’t back down.

Machi dropped the lawsuit.

He went deeper.

Tracked Lazarus Group, the North Korean hackers behind the Ronin and Harmony bridge exploits.

Mapped $200M in flows through Tornado, ChipMixer and Asian exchanges.

Shared those maps with law enforcement.

Helped freeze funds.

Zach doesn’t work for anyone.
But agencies follow his posts.

The US Secret Service cited him.

French cybercrime units called him faster than police.

Arkham paid him to unmask wallet owners.

He’s helped recover over $435M in stolen funds

All without showing his face

He exposed influencers:

BitBoy, Logan Paul, Lark Davis, Kyle Chasse.

He didn’t care if they had lawyers or fans.

He tracked phishing rings, airdrop dumpers, KOL frontrunners, insider pumps.

Posted 200+ investigations in 4 years.

In 2025, Paradigm made it official.

Zach joined as Incident Response Advisor.

Matt Huang credited him for recovering over $350M for victims.

After 4 years he’s just the same cartoon platypus avatar

And the same obsession.

ZachXBT became the standard.

His work changed exchange policies.
Got scammers arrested.

And turned onchain analysis into a form of justice.

He started with a rug.

And built one of the most trusted reputation in Web3.

The crypto detective.

These are his donation wallets in case you want to support his work:

EVM:
0x9D727911B54C455B0071A7B682FcF4Bc444B5596

SOL:
investigations.sol

BTC:
bc1qus70g077qqpue70ldk6grvh3qexvfhu5kn6wv7