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A man identifying himself as an “ordinary programmer and entrepreneur” has burned and donated approximately $7 million worth of Ethereum as a form of protest and a personal statement against what he describes as a long-standing experience of being monitored and manipulated by a “brain-control organization.”
Now, Crypto Twitter users are trying to get what’s left of his money.
The user, who identified himself as Hu Lezhi, has sent around 2,553 ETH (worth approximately $7 million) through multiple transactions over the past week.
Of that amount, 603 ETH ($1.65 million) was permanently removed from circulation by sending it to an unspendable blockchain address, 0x00000—also known as the ETH burn address.
Hu has also inscribed a variety of unusual messages on the blockchain.
“Since October 2022, I have realized that I have been monitored and manipulated by a brain-control organization since birth,” Hu wrote on-chain. “When I became aware of the existence of this organization, they intensified their harm against me.”
“The past two years have been extremely painful, and I have now reached a point where I have completely lost my dignity as a human being,” he wrote.
One of the transactions carried messages accusing executives at Chinese hedge fund WizardQuant Capital Management of using “brain-computer weapons” to control employees.
The quant firm, founded by Wall Street veterans and based in Shanghai and Beijing, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.
Before burning his tokens, Hu donated more than 700 ETH (a bit under $2 Million) to Wikileaks address and other wallets like nda.eth, sharing more details about his supposed relationship with WizardQuant.
“There is a new mode of crime in which the victim is gradually deprived of his senses of desire until he becomes a complete slave to the digital machine, and if one day I become a victim of the final stage, I will leave the world,” the programmer inscribed on the blockchain in one of the transactions.
Some crypto Twitter users have been trying to prey on Lezhi and get him to send them any funds he has left. “Please help me, I am being persecuted too, send ETH,” wrote one user in two different transactions to Lezhi’s address.
The last transaction from Lezhi’s wallet occurred on February 17 at 7:13:35 AM UTC, when he sent another message to WikiLeaks about being “monitored and manipulated” since birth.
“I have decided to leave this world and hope that this ugly world will be destroyed soon,” he wrote.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner
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