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We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
- eru 1y agoStealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.
- arghwhat 1y agoThat has never stopped anyone, plenty of ways to launder money, quite a few of which are unique to crypto.
- TheDong 1y agoEven with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system. With banking systems, each bank account has a unique address (private, but they'll cooperate with the government and police easily, and are experienced doing so), and that address is associated with a real person... and it operates slowly, which means the police can easily catch up to transactions. A transaction that crosses country boundaries has more scrutiny and takes longer, giving the police even more time and information. Crypto has public unique addresses (public keys), but there's no requirement any of them have names associated with them, and most don't. It operates more quickly than large bank wires, and easily crosses international borders. I'm not a fan of crypto, but even with public ledgers, it's less traceable and more anonymous than normal banks of most (all?) countries.
- arghwhat 1y agoThe lack of borders makes it more traceable as you don't run your head against a different jurisdiction bring unwilling to provide data. There's a lot of creative criminals though, and a lot of questionable creative crypto solutions that cater far too well to them.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 1y agoOne key component being alluded to here is that banks are legally required to know who you are (KYC). And there are consequences if they don’t. That alone makes a huge difference in everything having to do with the traditional banking system.
- eru 1y ago> Even with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system. Not really. From the comfort of my home, I as a member of the general public can trace any, say, bitcoin transaction I feel like, and work on de-anonymising it. And not only today's transactions, but all bitcoin transactions ever. To trace bank transfers, you need to be part of established law enforcement and have something like a warrant. (Or whatever the legal requirements are in your country.) The transfer might go via multiple countries with different rules and perhaps less enthusiastic authorities. And the data might get lost.
- danaos 1y agoThey use bitcoin "mixers" and harder to trace coins like Monero/zcash etc.
- elevaet 1y agoIf they don't cash out directly to an off-ramp there might not be a way to connect a crypto address to a person. If they use the crypto to buy illegal shit and sell that on the black market for cash - or sell the crypto directly on the black market for cash, they could evade detection. I wonder how much crypto is changing hands off-market in shadier corners.
- aorloff 1y agoThere’s orders of magnitude more wash trading than off market wallet swaps
- ramesh31 1y ago>Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'. People keep saying this, and yet it keeps happening. You seem to have far more faith in the police than is warranted. Exactly how many investigations have ended in an arrest and recovery of funds from these actions? I'm guessing somewhere near zero for anything not directly involving government or corporate interests.
- tim333 1y agoN Korea seems to do ok with it.
- walterbell 1y ago"French police free kidnapped Ledger executive" (Feb 2025), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42819018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42819018 Physical security primer for Bitcoin (2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgPhPkS2yc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgPhPkS2yc
- dandanua 1y agoReached? It's been happening for over a decade. Gosh, even the Bitcoin creator was probably murdered by "opportunists seeking to solve world hunger".
- qnleigh 1y agoThat's the first I've heard of this. Who thinks that?
- flmontpetit 1y agoBaffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.
- tetha 1y agoI always found the idea of a free, unregulated financial market being a positive thing amusing. Many of these regulations were made because more or less complex loopholes got exploited and many less wealthy people lost their money. And quite a few of these people with practical experience in these various exploits are still around.
- cakealert 1y agoYou can always opt into security by being the customer of a bank.
- figassis 1y agoNot sure if people who opted out of security expected to be doused in gasoline. There is something to say about whether this state of no security is generally desirable by society. Everywhere else this happened was eventually regulated. So thinking crypto will be an outlier is wishful thinking since it will never be allowed to be more powerful than governments. At most, new world orders will be created, but they will settle and be like the old ones, with some new more crypto native rules. They will always know who you ar and who you’re transacting with and where either of you are. Current crypto fanatics are assuming they will all be part of this club. This road will be filled with poor old men with fewer fingers and lots of regret. I want crypto to succeed, but I don’t expect it will be unregulated. You’ll pay the same taxes, you’ll go to jail if you try to avoid them or if you send crypto to entities banned by governments. Eventually the things that make crypto so valuable will be hammered out so it’s more like fiat. Maybe the value will crash or wealthy people of today will find a way to freeze it into reserve currencies (like the newly minted federal crypto reserve), but after some point it will stop being a source of wealth just by holding it at the right time. You will need to exchange it with value you create. The math of crypto wealth by HODLing is unsustainable.
- Duwensatzaj 1y agoCould be worse. In Russia someone discovered a fake prison and incinerator in a police officer’s home.
- danaos 1y agoI went from early bitcoin adopter to early bitcoin skeptic and despite missing most of the gains I have no regrets. During the early days the crypto space was concentrated to small online communities. People were mostly interested about the technology and the talk of price was limited, in the context "mass adoption". Nowadays it's about the price and the memes. Add to that the money laundering, energy waste and these abductions. Too many smart people work on these pointless projects instead of useful tech that benefits society.
- elevaet 1y agoI had a similar experience, and also have zero regrets about missing out on gains. The baked-in energy wastage and the scams and memes were a complete turnoff. That's not the way I want to get rich. Similarly I wouldn't invest in an arms manufacturer or a plastic bag company. Money that doesn't align with your values is just bad mojo.
- NoOn3 1y agoIf you think about it deeply, it's still not entirely clear who consumes more energy: the traditional banking sector and servicing of visa, mastercard, etc. cards, or cryptocurrency technologies. At least it seems to me that the difference is not that big.
- akimbostrawman 1y agoTurns out having a publicly visible bank balance is a bad idea. If only there existed a better coin without that issue...
- lazyasciiart 1y agoIn at least two of these stories, the “bank balance” was public because the person posted it on social media (Belgian guy and Turkish influencer). Im not sure if the risk is any lower when you post “my savings account is up to $1.6million!” ?
- mijamo 1y agoOf course it is lower! You have plenty of rich people living in known places without any special security and no one comes to kidnap them because they cannot just send over their whole wealth in an irreversible transaction in a second. The problem is not to know who has money, it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back.
- dandanua 1y ago> it is a system in which it is trivial to transfer it without any supervision and without any way to go back And somehow they praise it as a solution to all world's problems.
- akimbostrawman 1y agoWho is this they? cryptocurrencies and there users are a highly fragmented ecosystem. Ofc if you only listen to the most obnoxious superficial corners you will find conmen like in any community involving finances. cryptocurrencies solve real world problems but like any technology also have drawbacks.
- olelele 1y agoWhat real world problems?
- logicallee 1y agoThis happened to me, with the difference that nobody was abducted. Defense contractors associated with the U.S. military said they would sever fingers to make me "care more" here is a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/eYP7Xsj https://imgur.com/a/eYP7Xsj or https://ibb.co/DD6XTppy https://ibb.co/DD6XTppy This was sent over a Department of Defense channel.
- drdeca 1y agoWhat is this screenshot supposed to be demonstrating? What’s with all the asterisks in the image?
- logicallee 1y agoThe screenshot is an example of someone making a reference to "removing fingers" (direct quote from the image) to make someone "care more" (direct quote from the image). Regarding all the asterisks, your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps it is to make the text look scarier and more menacing, or more serious, or to make it seem like it was written by a madman who will actually do what is described. It's hard to know why they did that.
- vkou 1y agoThe best part in all this is that once the transaction goes through, the kidnappers can definitively verify that they've received the ransom that they were asking for, and that they no longer have any use for loose ends or witnesses.
- billpg 1y agoOr any reason to actually free the hostages.
- beloch 1y agoBanks are fortified and guarded for a reason. If you have money in bitcoin, it's only as secure as your person and whatever you use to access your crypto assets. If you had a million in gold, would you leave it on your desk? Walk around with it on the street? Your odds of getting to where you're going with the gold are pretty good in most places, but it's still a big risk. Brag about or show that gold off to somebody, as many in this story did, and you rapidly become a target.
- bufferoverflow 1y agoYou can store your private keys encrypted in a safety deposit box. You can store 3 copies in 3 different banks. It only costs $15-30 per year per box.
- beloch 1y agoThis is sensible, but how many people do it?
- acdha 1y agoThat helps, but only so much due to the inherent lack of security. We’ve already seen cases where they hold a family member hostage demanding someone turn over the keys, and you’re not getting things like duress procedures for $15/year.
- bufferoverflow 1y agoIn case of kidnapping having your money in a bank won't help you.
- acdha 1y agoHave you ever tried to withdraw a million dollars?
- littlestymaar 1y agoI'm honestly surprised this hasn't been more prevalent, especially since state actors (NK at least) have used cryptocurrencies to get foreign currency for several years now. No matter how rich and paranoid you are, there are really little you can do to protect yourself from a state actor that wants to get you, especially in an era of ubiquitous digital tracking from tech company that are willing to sell all the Intel they have about you to the highest bidder.
- ajb 1y agoThis was apparently reached in Russia a while back, and became very advanced: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579124072390463488.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1579124072390463488.html "In contrast, Russian cryptobros that I know tend to act very, very lowkey. The fewer people know about your activities, the better. Posting about dealing with crypto in social media is absolutely unthinkable. Why? Because that makes you too easy and lucrative prey " "Most likely explanation: Russian federal prison officer built an underground prison as an exact copy of a real prison. There he persuaded kidnapped ppl they are in a real prison. They'd give him wants he wanted, then he'd kill & burn them. In 2018 he died, prison was abandoned"
- Havoc 1y agoYeah maybe don’t post online about it if you own a ton of crypto
- anacrolix 1y agoMy takeaway from this is people are still turning a blind eye to the shenanigans of the much larger mainstream markets where shit like this happens all the time but is not amateur. The whole system is rigged. Yes, crypto too.
- sanzo 1y ago[dead]
- Greg54 1y ago[flagged]
- Yolanda8 1y ago[dead]