And now, to top it off, he was sick.
Nausea rose up within him in waves as
he made his rounds. He worked the night
shift, which meant intermittent inspec-
tions from dusk to dawn, patrolling the
grounds for any signs of trouble. The result
was always the same: nothing.
He was the lone guard at the Advania
data center, housed in a former U.S. naval
base not far from the Reykjavík airport in
Iceland. His job was to keep watch over
two hangar-like buildings that held rows
of small, box-like computers, the size of
two cartons of cigarettes, stacked in tow-
ers as far as the eye could see. It was a
hot, constantly blinking trove of devices,
lashed together with tangles of cables and
wires, all dedicated to a single job: min-
ing the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin.
Working around the clock, seven days
a week, the computers were part of the
largest concentration of Bitcoin mining
power in the world. By solving and pack-
aging complex “blocks” of encrypted data,
the machines helped secure and expand
the worldwide network of digital currency.
And in return for their work, they gener-
ated vast fortunes for their owners. The
Advania network alone, operated by Ice-
land’s largest IT provider, pulled in what’s
estimated to be millions a year.
The night shift at the data center was
the worst, the country plunged into dark-
ness 19 hours a day by a stingy sun. Braced
against the arctic cold on this January eve-
ning, the security guard was feeling sicker
by the minute. Finally, around 10 p.m., he
jumped into his car and sped home, rush-
ing straight to the bathroom. “Diarrhea,”
an attorney would later explain. When
he emerged, he was too weak to walk. So he
lay on the couch—just for a minute!—and
immediately fell asleep.
Jolted awake just before seven the next
morning, he rushed to his car to return
to work, only to find that someone had
slashed his tires. He called headquarters
and was told to wait for backup. Just after
noon, the guard, who had gone back to
sleep, awoke to the sound of police offi-
cers pounding on his door.While he was sleeping, someone had
broken into the data center and stolen
550 Bitcoin computers, along with moth-
erboards, graphics cards, and power
accessories—a haul worth $500,000
for the hardware alone. It was the fifth
cryptocurrency data center in Iceland
to be hit in two months. The total take:
$2 million in tech gear.
But the true value of the computers
was far greater. If the thieves knew how
to operate them, the machines could be
used to mine Bitcoins—an operation that
would churn out a continuous stream of
virtual money for the burglars, all of it
encrypted and completely untraceable.
The criminals weren’t robbing banks, or
even Fort Knox. They were stealing the
digital presses used to print money in the
age of cryptocurrency.I
t is a freezing winter evening and
I am sitting in a Reykjavík steak
house, awaiting the arrival of the
man charged with masterminding what
has become known in Iceland as the Big
Bitcoin Heist. Suddenly, the restaurant’s
front door blows open and Sindri Thor
Stefansson enters, accompanied by a
burst of frigid air and a gust of snow.
“Cold,” he says, removing his heavy
woolen cap and shaking the snow out of
his thick beard before sitting down for a
hunk of Icelandic beef.
At 32, Stefansson is the most famous
thief ever to emerge from this polite and
friendly island, ranked by the GlobalCASH MACHINES
Genesis Farming, one of the world’s largest
Bitcoin mines, in the data center near Reykjavík.
112 VANITY FAIR
PAGES 110–11:PHOTOGRAPHS: TOP, BY ALEX TELFER/TRUNKARCHIVE; BOTTOM, BY ANDREW TESTA/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX. PAGE 112:PHOTOGRAPH BY HALLDOR KOLBEINS/AFP/GETTYIMAGES. PAGE113: PHOTOGRAPHS: TOP, FROM ICELAND MONITOR; BOTTOM, FROMFRÉTTABLADID