Given that the entire world of “crypto” is collapsing into a black hole of weirdness from which their may be no escape, it’s been hard to pick out a favourite crypto story of recent days but I think there is actually a standout, slam dunk, winner: James Zhong, who was caught by the Feds with $3.36 billion hidden in a popcorn can. He had $661,900 in boring old-fashioned U.S. dollar dollar bills under his floorboards as well. But come on: $3.36 billion. With a capital B. In a popcorn can.
Now, $3.36 billion is quite a lot of money. The reason that Mr. Zhang could fit in a popcorn tin was that the money was in Bitcoins. The private key that controls these Bitcoins was on a device in a popcorn can under the floorboards. I am sure that there are many good reasons why people might like to be their own bank and manage their money in this way and one of them is that the money was stolen. Which, in this case, it was. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams spelled it out: “James Zhong committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road. “
The stolen money had been missing from