Thick as thieves - The Possessions You Wouldn’t Expect

Sometimes the reason one chooses between freedom and a governance can define destiny.

As all things invented have shadows and bright places they aren’t. Some 'forces' commune to act as beings of freedom while conspiring governance, completely redefining destiny. Some 'forces' govern the rule of theft and ensure a marketplace thrives, of thieves, be it the earth or the metaverse. Thick as thieves is the well used idiom, in reference to these nameless and anonymous gangsters, or a government of organized crime.

The legacy of the organization is an aspirational space for all criminals -or more appropriately, thieves who wanted to be part of. Vincenzo Peruggia started out as an NFT artist, but quickly gained the aptitude of a forger and started employing young dreamy NFT artists to mint from. He wanted to get to better and faster processes that did not involve waiting to be part of a meandering line for the best bid.

Unfortunately before Vincenzo figured that out, he was banned from the OpenSea marketplace in a sweep which had several many Vincenzoish personalities banned for the artful indulgences they partook in.

Vincenzo was a twenty-you-never-know year old pipe smoker who smoked like a chimney and forged like a stone, a lazy stoner who would always leave a trace of originality and a trail that follows back to him. He once stole the World’s most expensive NFT that was minted anonymously by LaughingIsrael002 and bought for 50000 BTC worth Ethereum by an anonymous address called iiir33k in an OpenSea auction. Vincenzo knew who that guy was because he had heard a reddit user known to be a financial wiz, mention that if ever the lost painting called ‘A painter to his work’ by Vincent Van Gogh would be minted and auctioned as an NFT, it would be priced at least at 10000 BTC.

Turns out the reddit user had named his opensea account the same as he did with his reddit, as verified by Vincenzo among a few other passive onlookers. Turns out the guy even did the first trade on the Restored Painting NFT. While the guy did not take any care to conceal his identity on social media or elsewhere on the internet, he was easy to trace. Vincenzo met him randomly at an NFT conference near his place and asked him about the ‘Painter to his work’ and the guy said they were a group of NFT traders who bought and traded NFTs amongst their private pool and only allowed BTC whales to be part of it.

Although in a slightly ridiculous yet convincing manner, Vincenzo had heard a rumor of this sort on certain darknet forums and never bothered to connect the dots until this incident happened at 50,000 BTC. Vincenzo had coded a replica of a wallet called BitPay which displayed 20000 BTC on it and casually winked at the guy with his app held alongside the most sincere smile he could manage. He even broke into the entire story of how he had found him through reddit and hearing about it on the darknet. The guy took him in and led him to the not so insider trader club when Vincenzo insisted he would pay double for the NFT.

It was a rich German banker who belonged to an old family. A family which had an ancestor who was a gestapo officer in the Nazi days of plundering art. That was all just an interesting story to create some amusement in the group, but it was just a pump and dump NFT endeavor. Vincenzo cornered the banker in a bathroom and intimidated him and got his private keys for the NFT and transferred it to himself, while also holding on to the copyright passkey. The banker had a nervous breakdown and collapsed in the men’s room while Vincenzo casually walked out shaking everyone’s hands saying he had some urgent business to see outside.

Forensic agencies like the CIA and FBI can track down transactions on the blockchain by observing movements of funds and the receiving addresses while also capable of keeping track of repetition, blacklistings and transactional newness. The secret group of NFT traders could not go to law enforcement because they would have to deal with exposing the banker’s identity. Vincenzo sold it on OpenSea and forgot to mix his Bitcoins alongside forgetting to use a VPN in his hurry to buy all the Beeple, Pak and a few teslas immediately from the same Ethereum address after he converted all his unmixed Bitcoin. The feds stormed into his house while locking all his devices with just the press of a button, the banker looked at the proceedings from afar, wondering why seeing Vincenzo in handcuffs was satisfying more than the Bitcoin he would recover anyway.

There was someone else who looked at this from a tiny house-fly surveillance drone.