Gummo’s journey is straight-out legendary - and, if we’re being totally honest, maybe a bit lucky too. Growing up dirt poor, this now famous hacker and Bitcoin billionaire didn’t exactly have a silver spoon in her mouth, but it was more likely a rusty one. But Gummo's story is about charcoal turning into a diamond over the years.
Gummo Bitcoin was a struggling hacker with a difficult childhood that transformed her life by investing her savings into Bitcoin mining gear and supercomputer in 2010, which eventually turned a million dollar investment into billions in Bitcoin holdings and rose to prominence in the cryptocurrency industry, where she now advocates for cybersecurity, privacy, and digital freedom.
With a father in prison and a mother dying when Gummo was only 12 years old, money was tight, to put it mildly. It was so tight, in fact, that as a teenager, Gummo (today known as Kate Drawdy) learned how to code on a Tandy TRS-80 Model II computer and started hacking to make ends meet.
Over time, she honed in on her skills and turned them into a legitimate career, landing a gig as a white-hat hacker (yes, the good kind). Then, in 2010, she made a wild decision.
Specifically, Gummo bet $1 million on Bitcoin mining equipment - a move that, in hindsight, looks like a stroke of genius, but at the time probably seemed a bit insane. But guess what? The gamble paid off big time. Today, this former basement hacker is a billionaire, having struck it rich in the world of Bitcoin.
At PlasBit, we love digging into stories like Gummo’s - those that reveal the tenacity, risks, and wild wins within the crypto world.
Gummo’s Rocky Start – An Unlikely Launch into Cybersecurity
Let’s rewind a bit to understand how Gummo got her training wheels in the hacking world and, ultimately, cybersecurity and cryptocurrency.
Before she was Gummo the Bitcoin whiz, she was just a kid scraping by in Jacksonville, Florida. After her mother’s death, she went from one family friend to another and had to take matters into her own hands just to pay the bills. Turns out, she had quite the knack for hacking.
At 17, Gummo dropped out of school, was living in her 1982 Chevrolet Chevette, and working as a grocery bagger, but pursuing her passion for tinkering with computers. She slowly saved up enough money to visit the Chaos Congress in Germany, an annual conference for hackers, where she met and befriended Boris Floricic, aka Tron, who pulled her deeper into cybersecurity.
Together, they worked on a smart card scheme, where they were able to reverse-engineer cards by several different providers to facilitate access to pay-per-view content and exclusive channels like HBO. Ironically, it was this brief stint into hacking that led Gummo to cybersecurity - the very field aimed at preventing people like her from getting into systems.
You know the saying “When life gives you lemons”? Well, Gummo hacked the entire lemon tree.
Eventually, her hacking escapades caught up with her and she was busted for hacking Hughes Electronics’ DirecTV DBS card. Instead of going to prison, she was offered a chance at redemption - an opportunity to become a white hat hacker and direct her skills for good, in a way that didn’t involve breaking the law.
As it happens, it was a common practice back in the ‘90s and ‘00s for the government to catch black hat hackers in the act and give them the option to work for them or go to prison. Incidentally, Gummo was one of those hackers.
So, she started working as a cybersecurity consultant at a company called NDS in Haifa, Israel, helping secure its systems. Following her return to Jacksonville, it was a whirlwind for a few years. Gummo went on to secure the DirecTV P4 card and lend a helping hand with the technology, doing a lot of work with the government, per her own account.
However, as her name got out and she aided in putting some heavy hitters away by working with law enforcement, Gummo got doxed and her identity (as well as that of her wife at the time and their kids) became public. But thanks to Gummo’s growing connections with the government, she and her family relocated to Indiana, “in the middle of a cornfield,” where she got a “real low key, low tech job” at a newspaper, handling its websites.
Not long after, she landed a job at a company in Chicago, setting up its IT infrastructure and securely connecting all of its offices. This was back at the time when cybersecurity was barely even mentioned and more of an afterthought, as Gummo recounted. Here, she met Willard Harper of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), who invited her to work on creating bi-directional fiber lines between the CME and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Rolling the Dice with Mining – The Gummo Bitcoin $1 Million Gamble
So what exactly was Gummo’s ‘big gamble’? Well, here’s where things get truly interesting.
Picture this: it’s 2010, and Bitcoin is barely a glint in anyone’s eye (except maybe a few nerds and tech enthusiasts). The idea of ‘digital money’ seemed as far-fetched as a sci-fi movie. But Gummo? After hearing about it, she immediately saw potential in this digital currency that others didn’t.
Being a visionary in her own way and seeing the world differently, she was intrigued by the idea of decentralized finance free from traditional banking, and wanted to own some of this “nerd money.”
When Harper, amazed by Gummo’s work so far, asked her what else she was capable of doing and what she needed to make it happen, she admitted that Bitcoin had piqued her interest and that “about $1 million would work” - which Harper happily obliged.
As a matter of fact, as Gummo remembered, he “literally opened up a file cabinet he had a million dollars in, and he’s like ‘alright, go do it’ - and that’s what I did.”
Gummo didn’t just dip her toes in; she decided to dive in headfirst. With a cool million bucks, she invested in Bitcoin mining gear - a decision that her accountant might’ve called ‘high risk.’ She assembled and fired up a mining supercomputer (think duct-taped, jury-rigged cooling, and enough fan noise to drown out a jet engine) right across the street from the CME. Soon, Bitcoin started trickling in.
It’s worth noting at this point that Bitcoin mining in those days was quite different from the industry it’s evolved into today. Despite requiring a lot of computing power to solve complex mathematical problems involved in the process, there were no massive server farms yet dedicated to doing this. It was mostly just hobbyists running rigs on their own premises.
After managing to mine about 5,000 BTC when it was trading about as little as $200 - $300 per coin, Harper was so impressed with Gummo’s endeavor that they went on to build three more such supercomputers over the next eight months. In a year and a half, they developed a mining operation that would make the dwarves in the Lord of the Rings jealous, sucking up massive amounts of electricity but also churning out Bitcoin like nobody’s business, extracting close to a whopping 80,000 BTC.
Interestingly, despite recognizing its massive potential, Gummo at first wasn’t confident that Bitcoin would ever achieve its current value. As she told the host of The BarCode podcast, she “thought it would be like Monopoly money, nerd money,” and that “if there’s going to be nerd money, I should have quite a bit” of it.
Gummo’s Bitcoin miner, named LINDA after her mother and standing for ‘Low-Impact Neuro-Dynamic Algorithm,’ was easily mining about 160 BTC a day, right at the heart of the traditional financial system. At its height, it brought this former hacker about 180,000 BTC, and according to Gummo’s latest interview, she had “over $7 billion worth of Bitcoin” to her name.
In fact, her shock at the soaring price of Bitcoin in 2014 and her growing fortune as a result of something she only got into out of sheer curiosity forced Gummo to seek counseling. She said she had many nervous breakdowns and needed help from a psychiatrist “to fully grasp the value of what I owned.”
Although she subsequently returned to Jacksonville and went back into cybersecurity consulting, those early mining days are part of what makes Gummo a true OG (Original Gangster) in the crypto world. She didn’t just jump on the bandwagon; she built part of the wagon. Her success was no accident, though. It took persistence, vision, and a fair amount of nerdy hardware.
Rising Fame and Skepticism in the Bitcoin Community
Today, the tale has spread far and wide in the Bitcoin community, becoming Bitcoin folklore, with people swapping details of her journey from a black hat basement hacker to a Bitcoin billionaire. However, some crypto enthusiasts believe the Gummo Bitcoin story is just too wild to be real. Is every detail of her story verified? Not really - but that’s what adds to the legend. You know, like Bigfoot or Area 51, only we know for real that Gummo exists.
Among the skeptics is Reddit user lindacupple, who questioned Gummo’s claims in the r/hacking subreddit. Particularly, this user found that Gummo, who was called Keason Drawdy at the time “appears to host or be affiliated with a forum” that was built using Joomla, “which had a very simple exploit exposed in 2023,” suggesting that Gummo should’ve been familiar with potential vulnerabilities.
“As of today, the forum still exposes files which assist in enumeration that can be very easily hidden from the internet. If Keason is affiliated with this forum, I would have expected him to have secured his own systems to the highest standards. (...) Also, as the master hacker he has portrayed himself to be, I would have expected him to perform an analysis of Joomla and identify the vulnerability.”
Regardless of the (un)founded skepticism (hey, even the best white hats have their off days!), Gummo’s interviews and public appearances seem to back up her story. Whether it’s a bit of luck or the background as a self-taught hacker (which is impressive in itself), the saga continues to captivate crypto enthusiasts across the globe.
Compared to early crypto legends like Hal Finney, who received Bitcoin’s first-ever transaction, and Martti Malmi, who contributed heavily to the Bitcoin source code, Gummo’s story is a bit less conventional.
And while Finney and Malmi were on the academic or developer side, Gummo came from the hacking world. There’s no denying that she shares their passion for Bitcoin’s potential, and like them, she got in early enough to make a killing.
Here on the PlasBit blog, we’re dedicated to capturing stories from crypto history, and Gummo’s tale fits right in with the likes of Martti Malmi and Hal Finney.
Despite early doubts about the future price of Bitcoin, Gummo now believes that it should be much higher. Indeed, she has argued that the flagship decentralized finance (DeFi) asset is actually still undervalued. More to the point, she expects it to reach a whopping $150,000 and continue upwards, thanks to increased institutional interest and its price history.
At the same time, Gummo has been sharing advice for newcomers in the crypto sphere, including a warning to stay away from altcoins, which she believes are based on “speculative forecasts & other proofs that are not defined in any legal representative.” More recently, she also recommended to “never keep cryptocurrency on any exchange.”
Additionally, Gummo advised never to hold Bitcoin with a bank either, as “entrusting a bank custodial control over your crypto is akin to installing a Ferrari engine into a Ford Pinto. ..with no doors & a bad gas tank.. that’s leaking..,” ultimately echoing the self-custody views of another Bitcoin OG, Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp.
So if there’s one thing clear about Gummo, it’s that she’s not just a Bitcoin billionaire and not in it just for the money. She strikes as a true Bitcoin believer who wants to make a lasting impact and inspire others to do the same.
For Gummo, Bitcoin is about more than just personal wealth; it represents a movement, a way for individuals to reclaim control over their financial futures.
Life Today – From Bitcoin Billionaire to Cybersecurity Advocate
What’s life like for Gummo nowadays? Although it may sound like a cliche, especially if her claims of owning over $7 billion in Bitcoin and being the 369th richest person in the world are true, Gummo says she always wanted a normal life, working 9 to 5 every day.
She is not exactly sipping cocktails on a yacht somewhere in the Caribbean 24/7 (well, not that we know of), even though she easily could. Instead, according to the interview from March 2022, Gummo went right back into the world of cybersecurity, doing what she always loved the most.
In other words, she is still threat-hunting and tracking down hackers, making the digital world a bit safer as she wanted to feel useful and part of something bigger, and because:
“The thing that people don’t really understand is that there really is no more privacy in this world. Unless you go and live on an island somewhere in the South Pacific with no electricity and no other people, there are things to be taken advantage of, and systems and devices and so on. (...) Things continue to be inherently insecure, millions of people have their info stolen, sold, used against them.”
On top of that, Gummo shared her belief that the arrival of quantum computers would “make all current and former encryption algorithms absolutely obsolete.” So, “if you have something that you’ve encrypted in the past or you have some encrypted files and they’ve been anywhere on the Internet, (...) those files won’t remain encrypted for long.”
“I’ve been responsible for putting some heavy hitters away. I’ve worked with law enforcement in the past, some real heavy hitters. I’m really good at hunting hackers and finding, not finding just people, but finding the real hacker. The real hacker that’s really causing the mayhem. I’m that guy that looks for that hacker.”
Moreover, she pointed out that websites today have countless flaws and that “right now, about 90% of the web and the technologies that support them, and your applications and websites, are inherently insecure.” According to her, it could be “a web server running an open port or a misconfigured file on your server;” but “there’s a little bit of something out there for everyone to take advantage of and now everyone is paying the price.”
Speaking of which, Gummo observed just how easy it was for anyone to fall victim to cyber crimes, even if (or especially if) they thought they would never become one, as “all you have to do is do a DNS query on anyone’s web domain and you can begin to uncover the pieces of how insecure most organizations and individuals are.”
Hence, Gummo has become a vocal advocate for responsible hacking, as well as for Bitcoin, seeing it as a way for people to gain more financial independence. Although not a household name like Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, Gummo’s become something of a folk hero in the Bitcoin community.
In March 2024, at the age of 53 and with 37 years in the industry under her belt, Gummo decided to hang up her white hat and retire. As announced, she “won’t be touching any more keyboards,” and was looking to “responsibly” sell her massive stash of 72,527 remaining Bitcoin (worth nearly $5 billion!), per a now-deleted post on X from April.
Specifically, she explained what this meant exactly:
“No deals with organized crime, third parties, or middlemen - just direct transactions with integrity. Selling in lots of 100 for transparency only. Let’s keep it real & legal in the crypto world!”
In an article posted on X around the same time, Gummo voiced her enthusiasm regarding artificial intelligence (AI) and reiterated that her “interests in Bitcoin were never about riches; in fact it played a role in the dissolution of my marriage of 30 years.” She also expressed a desire to “do something good with my Bitcoin,” suggesting plans to invest it in AI:
“With advanced artificial intelligence, we can unlock a myriad of possibilities. New drugs can be created to treat diseases, materials can be developed to further space exploration, secure communication methods can be established outside of government control, and cities can better manage resources and economic viability. I strongly believe that the key lies in true Artificial Intelligence Residing in A Quantum Environment, not just the large language models we have today.”
Furthermore, Gummo shared plans to establish a campus in Colorado, bringing together “engineers, scientists, professionals, and academics in the world of artificial intelligence” to collaborate and innovate, looking for “partners who share my vision and want to be a part of building something truly groundbreaking, (...) rather than just selling off my Bitcoin.”
Finally, she also addressed the skepticism regarding her credibility and the authenticity of the Gummo Bitcoin story, assuring the members of the crypto community that “my intentions are genuine” and that “I am driven by a desire to change the world for the better, just like many of you.”
Conclusion
All things considered, Gummo’s Bitcoin story is like a modern-day fairy tale, if your fairy godmother was a server farm and your magic wand was a mining rig[1] . Starting from the humblest of beginnings, this former black-hat-turned-white-hat hacker achieved a billionaire status through a mix of skill, daring, and a bit of Lady Fortune.
At PlasBit, we see the Gummo Bitcoin story as a testament to the incredible possibilities in crypto - a world where the underdog can rise to the top, where the traditional rules of finance are turned upside down, and where visionaries like Gummo make their mark by daring to dream differently.
For crypto fans, her journey from hacker to Bitcoin legend bears witness to the transformative potential of the maiden cryptocurrency. And if this story has taught us anything, it’s that fortune really does favor the bold and that, sometimes, life’s wildest gambles are the ones that pay off the biggest.
