>Go after the financial links. If the only way the ransom can be paid is traveling to Russia with gold bars you’ll see a lot fewer ransoms paid. >And before yo

>Go after the financial links. If the only way the ransom can be paid is traveling to Russia with gold bars you’ll see a lot fewer ransoms paid. >And before you say cryptocurrency there’s lots of ways Western governments could intervene if they got serious. I was definitely gonna say "cryptocurrency". I see absolutely no feasible way that any government could enforce things such that the only way a ransom could be paid would be traveling to Russia and paying the ransomers with gold bars. I severely doubt any Western government is going to try to ban any cryptocurrency - even Monero. And if they try, enforcement will be extremely difficult. No matter how hard they make it for a victim to pay a ransom or obtain the assets needed to pay a ransom, a sufficiently desperate victim and a sufficiently greedy ransomer will find a way to make it work. Perhaps it could realistically help a bit if they threatened victims with prison time for paying ransoms, but in my opinion this would be pretty draconian and wrong - like threatening to imprison someone whose child is kidnapped by a cartel if they pay a ransom to prevent the child from being killed. Sometimes the victims can be blamed for major negligence, but not always. And even when they are negligent, I don't think they should be punished or prevented from recovering their business in such an extreme way.