A crypto-alchemist made me an accidental billionaire

When I present this very mundane answer to him, Broeksmit is not convinced.

He constantly creates new tokens, watches their value skyrocket, only to deplete a few days later. But the reality of what is happening eventually catches up with him. As of February 19, the balance in his wallet is zero. (So ​​is mine.) His rage against Incognito is monumental. He says he has paid some of his friends and acquaintances with special coins, and that now those people are angry with him. “It’s a nightmare,” he says.

Alongside his custom tokens, he says he has lost all the money – in regular cryptocurrencies – that he had invested initially to pump up his custom currencies. In one of our conversations, I again try to get an exact figure for his losses, but he won’t say it. “I can’t tell you right now, Marie is going to be pissed off,” he says. Peter-Toltz, in the background, suggests leaving the room, but Broeksmit stops her. “Just about all we had,” he adds.

After that, it will be quiet for a few weeks, with the exception of the occasional text message.

On April 5th I receive a phone call at 6pm London time. It’s Broeksmit. He sounds upset. All is lost, he says. They have lost the court case, they have been thrown out of their attic. The most important thing is that Peter-Toltz is missing. “We parked to sneak into our house – and now I just can’t find Marie,” Broeksmit tells me. “She is gone.” I suggest that Peter-Toltz may have gone to stay with some friends. “Friends? We don’t have friends now, he says.

It is now clear that Broeksmit had fallen in love with a mirage. Buffeted by personal hardships and financial difficulties, he had grasped a miraculous solution and found the get-rich-quick delusion that pervades the worst corners of the cryptocurrency world.

Court records later uncovered by master cards show that a day after our last interaction, on April 9, Broeksmit is arrested and placed under a restraining order, prohibiting him from coming near the loft again. A “ghost gun” without a serial number is found in his car. He is released shortly afterwards. He re-enters the property four days later, on April 13. Then a long period of silence – until April 23, when someone sends me text messages from Broeksmit’s Signal account. It’s not him. The text reads: “Marie has been found and now we must find Val who is missing.” I ask who writes. Nobody answers.

On April 25, Broeksmit’s lifeless body is found on the grounds of a high school, not far from where he had previously lived. An investigation into the cause of his death is pending, but initial police reports rule out foul play. The LAPD officer in charge of the inquiry did not respond to an email request for comment. Marie Peter-Toltz, despite what the anonymous texter told me, is currently a missing person according to the California Department of Justice, and she has not responded to my texts, emails and direct messages on Twitter. Inevitably, Broeksmit’s death has become fodder for a cottage industry of conspirators, who strive to see in the death of a one-time whistleblower the work of an evil cabal.

But I feel like I knew the man behind the whistleblower, who often delighted in asking about mundane things like my dating life in between sharing wild claims and tall tales. The news of his death shocks me. Broeksmit’s crypto-alchemy plan had backfired, sending him into a spiral that ended up cutting his life short. I’m left with a story I’d promised to write, putting it together by going through piles of texts and emails and hours of conversations with a man who desperately wanted to be taken seriously.

“Be kind to us when you write about this”, says one of Broeksmit’s last texts. “Please write me fair.”