HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ josu

"A former blackhat hacker who goes by the name Gummo online claims to have amassed around $7 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC).

(...)

The latest comments came as part of a follow-up interview published on Saturday after the initial discussion occurred in late 2020. During the first video, Gummo stated that he built four supercomputers to mine Bitcoin when it was priced at around $200-300 back in 2013, and generated more than 80,000 BTC within a year and a half. According to his claims, he has now amassed roughly 179,000 BTC."

https://cointelegraph.com/news/truth-or-fiction-popular-form...

⬐ lawrenceyan

If I recall correctly, this was DRW that hired him to set up the mining servers.

⬐ hamiltonians

sounds like bullshit

given $1 millilon to mine ..who does that

somehow in 2014-2015 when btc is at 200-300 and already very hard to mine, gets thousands of btc with a supercomputer, which would not have worked well. he needed asics or gpu. and constantly upgrading hardware. the setup he shows would not have worked.

verdict: a great embelishment. maybe he mined some btc but nothing close to billions of dollars.

⬐ newacc9

sounds like you didn't watch it. he was initially given 1m, he didn't exclude further investment

⬐ alephnan

> given $1 millilon to mine ..who does that

Venture capitalists? Musicians like Nas invested in Coinbase. They may have capital, high level technological knowledge, interest, but not the domain expertise to implement the code.

The claim was that an executive on Wall Street was interested in crypto and collaborated with him.

Peter Thiel’s fellowship is also in the same spirit. A billionaire gives some smart teenagers $100k to experiment and sees what happens.

On a much lower scale, even I with my limited wealth is interested in hiring someone else to do some programming exploration on my behalf, even though I’ve been a senior software engineer myself. It’s plausible that a high paid Wall Street executive finds it better use of their time and money to focus on their core competency making orders of magnitude more than a million a year, and then outsource the crypto exploration to someone else is a more effective programmer. Security people are well versed in cryptography, so it’s not that crypto currencies is out of scope of a hacker’s area of expertise.

The idea of capitalism is that people use capital to do the heavy lifting. If you don’t have the capital, then one way to get their is building up capital by working jobs in some area of expertise. After a certain point, it is more financially optimal to spend time allocating capital / assets than it is to grind away doing the labor yourself.

> $200-300 back in 2013, and generated more than 80,000 BTC within a year and a half

Which $16-24 million. That’s a significant amount, but it’s not unimaginable for the HackerNews and tech crowd. Many people here are a degree of separation or less away from that wealth. If you work at a unicorn, that person would be the founder.

What’s prosperous about the claim? That someone, who was likely sufficiently affluent and had their basic needs met, HODL’d $20 million worth of coins since 2013?

The word supercomputer may be abused, but there are Bitcoin miners who produce thousands of Bitcoin a year. A supercomputer here can just mean a really big cluster.

⬐ nodule5

His video showing one of his "supercomputers" is 20 PCs that look like they are old Dell computers a highschool was getting rid of. Maybe if he said 2009 it would be plausible, but this is late 2013 and btc mining was already well established and dominated by the Chinese asic manufacturers. Why waste time trying to mine Bitcoin with gpus? There is no chance that this guy could have an entire 10-20% of the hashrate himself with only $1m. Even if you bought or developed Asics you would have to mine for nearly a year to break even, much less 20x your investment. Also, why would this business that gave him $1m to do this allow him to keep all of the Bitcoin? Nothing about his story adds up.

⬐ yosefjaved1

I listened to this a few weeks ago and was amazed by this guy's story. He didn't have a great start in life but didn't let that slow him down in chasing after his interests. Also, it shows that having a supportive partner that believes in you can really change the course of your life for the better.

Does anybody know this guy? It would make me feel great that he reads Hacker News.

⬐ Fargoan

Probably fake

⬐ sshine

The original interview is from December 10, 2020.

The follow-up interview from March 12, 2022:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZtkMmVDNEo

⬐ Gatsky

First interview about his life story was great.

Second interview was quite different. He kinda brags about being a hotshot hacker and claims to own $7 billion in bitcoin. The latter point is plausible based on the first interview, but why would you ever say that out aloud on a very popular youtube channel…

⬐ pcthrowaway

Yeah I'm pretty skeptical to be honest. The rags-to-richest story is heartwarming, but it's a bit odd for an unknown security professional (I can't find anything else about him online) to announce that they have 1% of all bitcoin.

⬐ unixhero

Because he can't be found within the deep Finish forests anyway :)

⬐ hamiltonians

like holding up a please rubber hose me sign

⬐ sshine

A by now 50 year old hacker who finally decides to make his story public has lots of reasons to brag. The reason why I could never become a blackhat is my need for affirmation. People who can do great intellectual work in the dark without anyone around them understanding or fully appreciating the effort involved have a different psychological profile, but they're still human. I really don't consider his bragging a bad side.

Bragging about how much money he has, however, seems both stupid and dangerous. I cringed when I heard about his wealth, on account of his own safety. If you own more than a few million bucks worth of Bitcoin, you better not say this.

⬐ alephnan

> The reason why I could never become a blackhat is my need for affirmation. People who can do great intellectual work in the dark without anyone around them understanding or fully appreciating the effort involved have a different psychological profile

THIS.

I used to think doing a PhD is lonely, but even then you have venues to discuss your ideas. Even with esoteric or difficult topics, there is an opportunity to package it for the masses. E.g. physicists.

I imagine it’s hard for hackers to even communicate with their significant others. This is not a topic you can go to school for and meet people who have the same context.

⬐ adamsmith143

Things like Defcon definitely exist so its not like this is some completely unknown subculture with no connections to other people.

⬐ twox2

Defcon hasn't really been much of a blackhat gathering since the early 00's. You have to go to south america, eastern europe, and asian conferences to make those kind of connections.

⬐ maxmalkav

I watched the original interview (2020) and I found it interesting, most of the things sounded plausible.

At some point during the second interview he starts to digress about current society, inter-human relationships (or lack of) and technology, the "dangers" of the meta-verse and so on. This is ok, but it is more of an informal conversation between two individuals that are not experts on those fields, and it has to be put in perspective as such.

It also shocked me quite a bit when he went into details about his financial situation and I felt a bit disturbed about his vigilante-like statements regarding his hacking activity to "protect" the people that needs protection.

At some point in this second interview I was not sure if he was talking about actual concerns regarding society and technology or if he was just projecting his own personal struggles and worries about human relationships, isolation, and meaning of work, life and everything else.

(Edited to correct some spelling and grammar)

⬐ twox2

I also found it way out of character and not aligned with his narrative when he said how much BTC he has.

⬐ snshn

The mining supercalculator could be a cover story for doing black hat stuff (hacking exchanges, injecting miners, etc). Not saying he did, but nobody's perfect.

⬐ tptacek

I don't believe any of this. Any other takes?

⬐ tedmiston

Well, we have a public blockchain here… so if he wants to provide his wallet address to substantiate the claims, that seems the most reasonable support to me.

⬐ Shinchy

This channel is fantastic, some of the interviews they do are incredibly fascinating. Saying that, Gummo's accounts of his wealth always struck me as maybe a little on the far-fetched side.

⬐ trenning

This guys story is amazing. I really liked his closing message in the linked video.

⬐ snakeboy

I haven't watched this video yet, but this channel "Soft White Underbelly" has some really incredible content especially around drug addiction in the US. Has helped me to humanize the headlines we see about the "opioid crisis" in recent years.

⬐ sshine

It's my favorite channel as of lately.

He's interviewed drug addicts, gang members, prostitutes, gangsters, pimps, inbreds, cross-dressers, skinheads, rapists, homeless, transgenders, native americans, kids.

It lets me meet people I normally wouldn't have the patience to get to know, and it humanizes them.

⬐ sgt

Also check out Peter Santolini, another YouTuber who recently interviewed the guy from SWU.

⬐ Fargoan

That channel is cringe

⬐ fredoliveira

We really have to let go of this dumb idea that anything out of one's comfort zone is "cringe".

⬐ Chris2048

Who said that's the reason it's cringe? You're burying the lede.

⬐ Fargoan

I went on your Twitter and saw you posted about Bored Ape Yacht Club. BAYC is cringe.

⬐ that_guy_iain

I don't think that BAYC is out of his comfort zone more than they think spending thousands on a jpg you don't own the copyright or any real rights just to flex is cringe. I would suspect many people who hold that view think Rolexs and luxury watches are also cringe.

⬐ Fargoan

Sounds like you don't know what cringe means. I will state my belief in another way. This channel is exploitative, has liars, takes itself too seriously. It's not good and it's something I don't want to associate with.

⬐ WaxedChewbacca

None

⬐ tptacek

That's not what "cringe" means. To be "cringe", you have to be vicariously embarrassed for the person involved.

⬐ jrumbut

The channel certainly has interviewed some fascinating individuals, but the repetitive lines of questioning he pursues are tiresome.

He almost always starts by asking if someone grew up with both parents. That's an interesting thing to know but interview after interview this question leads interviewees down the same path and it leaves blind spots.

I hardly ever hear him ask in depth about their early experiences at schools, churches, childhood friends, extended family, the healthcare system, sports, media, etc.

There are some Freudian assumptions baked into his interview style and I think if he challenged himself to try other angles he could go from humanizing the guests to individualizing them.

⬐ that_guy_iain

> I hardly ever hear him ask in depth about their early experiences at schools, churches, childhood friends, extended family, the healthcare system, sports, media, etc.

To be fair, they're normally 30 minute interviews even in 3-hour long interviews very rarely do any interviewers go in depth on any subject. I think I understand what you want but I don't think you'll ever really find it.

⬐ jrumbut

That's exactly the issue. Since he isn't going to memoir depth (or only rarely does), I'd like him to make sure not to dig the same shallow hole over and over again.

⬐ lawrenceyan

I've always been curious about Gummo and his backstory. Thank you for posting this.

⬐ avador

“I discovered computers”, the title of this submission, is uttered very early on in this video. I feel the phrase to be terribly universal in that, at some age, at least, computers provide an antidote to the terrible. Confronted with an obvious and stark lack of power, we are suddenly granted power: the machine does exactly what I say, if I have the patience to learn how to say it. What an incisive and timely tool. What serendipity!

A stick on the ground remains a stick - no staff, no wand, no artifact of thunder - unless urgency presses the insignificant into significance.

⬐ avador

Oh. I see the title was changed. :(

⬐ amingilani

Oh yeah, I feel like it was like that for a lot of us.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

        And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through

the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html

⬐ guidovranken

I recommend watching the other video's on the channel as well. This hacker interview is the odd one out, most other video's are interviews with drug addicts and prostitutes living on Skid Row LA about their life story. Very interesting and haunting.

⬐ nadavami

If you're not already familiar with Soft White Underbelly (interviews and portraits of the human condition), I highly recommend checking out Mark's other videos. I particularly enjoyed the recent series of folks from Appalachia.

https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly