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Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

So it appears criminals are getting wiser and a new wave of home and personal robberies may emerge. Will this push crypto owners to entrust their currency with more secure institutions, leading to these "decentralized" currencies to be once again under control and manipulated by banks and governments?

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It doesn't matter if you own crypto or not. The mere existence of it creates a threat for every relatively rich person out there. They can simply coerce your family to buy bitcoin and give them some, on threat that they kill you.

> The mere existence of it creates a threat for every relatively rich person out there.

For every rich person that openly shows their wealth.

I'm sure it's not impossible to find 'under the radar' rich people - and people who take care to not flaunt their wealth will probably be more likely to try and make the whole thing go away quietly by paying up.

Probably the criminals were upset about their withdrawals taking so long ;p

It took me like 2 months to cash out the first time.

Seriously, I don't think this will scare off anyone, especially not exchanges. They make so much money right now they can just hire bodyguards.

I could imagine the current exchanges becoming banks, in the disruptive sense. What's stopping them from creating interest-earning savings accounts and loaning out on a fractional reserve basis? Seems like we'll be back where we were a century ago, bank runs and all.

The governments of the world?

"Tether" is effectively a fractional-reserve "currency" in use by bitfinex.

There isn't much evidence that Tether Limited is indeed keeping a reserve of USD for each Tether printed [0]. They are minting hundreds of millions of Tethers and there are a lot of skeptics out there who don't believe that they have billions of USD in a bank. [0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4133884-bitcoin-additional-...

That’s what fractional reserve means.

>they can just hire bodyguards

Which won't be able to carry weapons in most places. You'll have a hard time finding people who'll fight back when you're being kidnapped at gunpoint.

With enough armed bodyguards you aren't going to be kidnapped at gunpoint. Why risk your life going after a hardened target when there are so many vulnerable ones.

I imagine its quite easy to find mercenaries that are willing to fight back. There is an entire industry for hiring people to fight wars.

I think their point was that that isn't legal in many places.

Don't go to those places. Or hire off duty police to escort you in those countries.

Bill Browder can't eat at the same restaurant twice because his food may be poisoned. If you are a high profile target you have to change your patterns to remain safe.

>With enough armed bodyguards you aren't going to be kidnapped at gunpoint.

Okay, now the kidnappers dress up as cops and "arrest" you. Perhaps they bribe the actual cops to do it for them?

Armed bodyguards do not seem like a substantial increase in difficulty for someone who intends to kidnap a person.

> Which won't be able to carry weapons in most places.

Most places? Places like what? Even Germany, with its rather restrictive gun laws, has exemptions for private security companies allowing to carry weapons.

While I don't know any specifics, I doubt that it's gonna be that much more difficult, in Eastern Europe out of all places, to get a legal carry permit.

The current wave of crime in parts of the Ukraine is, I shit you not, grenade violence. I’m inclined to agree with you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/world/europe/ukraine-gren...

which is ironic as the RAF was a fairly hopeless terrorist organization that did not carry out many actions

I met an old school mate years ago she was working as a PA for deutsche bank in the uk and she mentioned that the senior mangers where annoyed as the UK would not allow them to have armed body guards.

Bitcoin was released at 2009. Since then, this is the first kidnapping probably linked to cryptocurrencies. Yeah, this is definitely a trend. Since people are publicly boasting about their crypto fortunes and kidnappers has published their demands... /s

First?

https://www.vice.com/en_id/article/3knb7n/kidnappers-around-...

> Since people are publicly boasting about their crypto fortunes

You don't need people boasting about their crypto fortunes. As soon as you set up a Bitcoin tip jar, anyone can look directly at the blockchain to determine how much money you have - and how much you have had at any point in time and where the money went.

You can create and use as many addresses as you want - there's absolutely no reason to keep your savings on the same address as the tip jar.

Perhaps the would-be theives might notice someone going through a lot of different addresses. Better to just use Monero and keep the single address for tips as no one would be able to see the address balance without a viewkey.

Yes but everyone can see how much you received over the years. And, well, if there have been thousands of BTC passed through that tip jar, it's reasonable to assume that the organization still has control over a big amount of these funds.

Yes but everyone can see how much you received over the years.

Only if you use static addresses. If you're receiving thousands of BTCs, you can easily afford to write a widget that generates a new address for each donor (behind a captcha, to avoid DoS).

Yes? I mean, that's happening even without lurid kidnappings.

It’s sad that people need to rediscover the power of the rubber hose this way. I like the idealism in the crypto community, even if I think it’s unfounded. Seeing them face the reality of human nature and behavior would be like watching a really nice old nun lose her faith.

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