Update: You are right, It's not the perfect crime. That's why I write code for a living :) It's just a crime, but the rewards can be well worth the risks. You

Update: You are right, It's not the perfect crime. That's why I write code for a living :) It's just a crime, but the rewards can be well worth the risks. You expect returns comparable to robbing a bank, but the criminal method is much safer for the robbers, they can even avoid violence altogether. In the real world, badass shellshocked war veterans who've done time in a russian prison would meet very little resistance from a bitcoin-rich geek. They don't need AK-47s to extort most of us, they just have to say something really scary, like 'All your bitcoins are belong to us. Now!' and pretty much all the geeks I know would shit their pants and hand over their private keys or make the transfer. It's also certainly possible to prove that you did own the funds. That is, if the police is not in on it. And when we're talking big money, impossible things become possible, especially in corrupt countries. Bitcoin is used all over the world. Maybe it's hard to imagine such crimes in US or Europe, but I wouldn't vouch for the rest of the world. Much much shittier things are happening every day. Multi-sigs and address shuffling makes sense to us, but some random investor who's storing part of his wealth in cryptocurrency may have no idea.