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Comment by Adrig | Hacker News Reader

Two instances of crypto kidnapping happened recently in France just a few weeks apart. The first was the father of a crypto milionnaire who was rescued after a few days, missing a finger. The second is the daughter of a crypto CEO who fended off a kidnapping in broad daylight in the center of Paris, while she was with her husband and baby. Insane stuff.

This will only go worse and harder to protect from. Most of the instances I heard about were carried by "amateurs", which makes all this quite unpredictable.

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Thinking of cryptocurrencies, and trade with them, as the wild west, it shows that many people out there will turn into absolute animals and take the rights of others if the law wasn't there holding a gun to their heads to keep them in check.

These events will cause crypto to reinvent the entire financial and legal system then :)

... but (hopefully) without the insane amount of its historical baggage.

by removing more of the legal system

I mean kidnapping is still illegal.

What’s a crypto based legal system look like? I’m thinking maybe your sentence fluctuates depending on how many people have been released recently.

Maybe clever kids can fork their own legal systems?

Not really, though. Kidnapping and extortion are still illegal. The law, gun to the head included, is still there. If anything, this just shows what might happen if personal wealth is detailed on a public ledger.

The irony of this is that the completely irreversible nature of crypto transactions, which crypto boosters highlight as one of the primary security benefits of crypto, is actually its biggest Achilles heel.

If crypto transactions were reversible, then the person accepting cryptocurrency from thieves couldn't be confident that the chain of transactions would not be reversed. So it's a necessary condition of fungibility. Similar to physical cash or gold.

Also, cryptocurrency transactions are reversible, it just takes a hard fork or a 51% attack in order to do so. See the etherium DAO hack and resulting fork. I would argue this is a bad thing, as it goes against the principles of cryptocurrency.

After all these years I fail to understand how people seemingly versed in the subject are still spelling Etherium with an "i" instead of an "e". I wonder if all the occurrences of the error are made by people of the same linguistic origin. Out of pure curiosity, I wonder if you could share if you're an English native ? If so, it would rule out this hypothesis. If you are not an English native, would you share your mother tongue with me ? I myself am (an admittedly nosey) French.

Partly because that is how it’s spelled in Magic: the Gathering; the Ethereum founders say:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Founding_(2013%E2%80%...

Buterin chose the name Ethereum after browsing a list of elements from science fiction on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_elements,_ma...

Also, “Ethereum” looks like a misspelling to me; even though we’ve got “petroleum” and “linoleum” my instinct is to replace it with the more common “-ium” ending from the Periodic Table.

However, I have never been inclined to pronounce or spell “Dubai” with a diaresis, because it’s an Arabic word with a diphthong.

I am a native speaker of American English, second language Spanish; polyglot including proficiency in Latin, Italian, Greek, Sanskrit, and Semitic family.

Interesting, thanks. About Dubai, in french it would be pronounced "Du-bay" without the diaresis. It is not ambiguous in english though, but it never occurred to me !

I'm well-versed in cryptocurrency topics, but not well-versed in ethereum-related topics.

I am an english native, I probably picked up the -ium suffix because that's how elements are usually written.

Some crypto-ancap-bros I know would say this happened because these individuals failed to hire proper private security...

What stopped all the bank robberies? What stopped high-level government assassinations? What stops celebrities from being attacked/kidnapped?

In general, don't make yourself a target by self-custodying.

> What stopped high-level government assassinations? What stops celebrities from being attacked/kidnapped?

This has not been stopped, but mitigated a lot by hiring a sufficient amount of bodyguards.

> because these individuals failed to hire proper private security...

... or consider an important reason in the very restrictive gun laws in France.

Recently happened in Montréal too and yes, very amateurish operation that went very very wrong: https://globalnews.ca/news/10868204/quebec-crypto-influencer...

You mixed it up, the guy who lost his finger was a well off co-founder of a crypto company but not super duper rich himself, he was however the friend of a super rich of his co-founders. The goal was to extract money from this other person by hurting his friend.

There was however another case with the french familly of a Dubaï expatriated influencer, with a happier ending this time.

They don't have it mixed up. There were two separate cases with mutilated hands in the news recently, both France. You speak of the Ledger co-founder while GP of another.

My bad, I should have checked sorry.

Agree it will only get worse especially with the recent breaches of crypto wallets and PII associated with holders. If even some of these attempts to extort are successful we might see the breach-to-physical-attack pipeline become common.

I would imagine that if you were not an amateur you would be trying to directly attack smart contracts

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