JSON.parse() causes error: `SyntaxError: Unexpected token in JSON at position 0`

You have a strange char at the beginning of the file.

data.charCodeAt(0) === 65279

I would recommend:

fs.readFile('addresses.json', function (err, data) {
if (data) {
    console.log("Read JSON file: " + data);
    data = data.trim(); 
    //or data = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(data.trim()));
    storage = JSON.parse(data);
 }});

JSON.parse() does not allow trailing commas. So, you need to get rid of it:

JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(data));

You can find more about it here.