VeteranHODL

Who this is

V HODL on X, VeteranHODL by handle. His profile says it in slashes: former British Army, Bitcoin, AI, techno-thriller fiction. The novels are the Hunting Time series. Genesis came first, Eclipse followed in August 2026.

His own photo of the Genesis cover says Martin Warwick. So do the Amazon pages he links. That's a fair read, but no single source says both, so the record keeps the handle.

A wallet inside a novel

He sent 210,000 sats to a fresh Electrum wallet in July 2023, when he started writing, he says. Then he hid its twelve words in the book. Most of them as times in the plot, a few as plain objects in his own photos. In June 2026 he told X, and the hunt began. One photo a week at first, then faster as Eclipse got close.

A book promo that pays out. Not bad.

How he ran the hunt

Short posts, mostly. "Clue Five." "Six." "FINAL CLUE." In between, reminders that the wallet was still unclaimed, and one post that did the math: seven words out, 51 bits left. When a stranger doubled the prize, he said so. When the coins moved, he congratulated a winner he didn't know yet and offered a bonus. Two days later he posted every step.

Did he keep anything back? Only the book. You still need the paperback to check the page numbers.

The record

static readonly author = party("VeteranHODL", {
  key: "veteranhodl",
  kind: PartyKind.Person,
  aliases: ["V HODL"],
  about: "Former British Army soldier who writes techno-thrillers about Bitcoin and hid a working seed phrase in the first one.",
  profiles: [profile("twitter", "https://x.com/VeteranHODL")],
  facts: [
    fact("Announced that a genuine Bitcoin seed phrase is hidden within the pages of his novel Hunting Time, …", ANNOUNCEMENT, { date: "2026-06-29" }),
    fact("Said he sent 210,000 sats to a fresh Electrum wallet three years earlier, …", ADDRESS, { date: "2026-08-01" }),
    fact("Congratulated the winner the day the 420,000 sats were claimed and offered a bonus prize to whoever claimed them.", CLAIMED, { date: "2026-08-18" }),
    fact("Published the full solution: most of the twelve words hide as times in the plot, …", SOLUTION, { date: "2026-08-20" }),
  ],
});

No addresses. The coins that funded the wallet in 2023 came from an input that's very likely his. He never printed it, though, and the record only takes what a source says.