Could be my then neighbor. Started while in school and made around that sum with Glider. Went to study engineering (nothing IT) and then tried to focus on his health and reduced the wow sidejob.
Bernstein.io [1] is using it for patent and trade secrets verification. I've also seen an internal system with Merkle-tree-structures to verify digital safety inspections (e.g. that all devices can check the integretity of those checks and no supervisor can "modify" the database)