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Comment by littlestymaar | Hacker News Reader

I've been wondering for a long time how on earth have not Vitalik (or any prominent blockchain nouveau riche) been abducted by a drug Lord or North Korean spy already.

It's without doubt the easiest way to make a hundred million dollars with violence.

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Anyone with more than a 9 figure net worth usually has multiple full-time bodyguards. That's also because there are usually psychotic randos that are stalking them if they have any kind of fame. It's a trivial expense at that level of net worth. Public filings from Facebook show that Mark Zuckerberg spends $10 million annually on personal security. Elon said at Twitter he doesn't even go to the bathroom without his bodyguards.

A handful of bodyguards is enough to deter weirdos from assaulting you, but it's never gonna cut it against a determined and organized adversary who can make money out of this.

The hard thing with usual rich people is: “how are you gonna make money”, ransom could work but unless you are in some failed state it's actually kind of hard to get away with it. But when you have people who are immensely rich because of some liquid asset you can just steal, it lowers the bar a lot.

Yeah, but it's very much worth hitting the seven-or-eight figure crypto holders too - those guys don't have the liquidity to support 24/7 security staff. Sure, they could buy some tech, but security tech . . I'm trying to be nice, and it's just not working . . it's not going to keep out a determined and informed attacker. Their best defense gimmick is (would have been) anonymity, but staying anonymous on the chain requires extra steps, and not everyone is gonna do those.

Anonymity also requires you to give up one of the main reason to get rich at all…

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