"How to Not Get Kidnapped for Your Bitcoin"

From the New York Times, November 17:

Escaping zipties, hiring bodyguards and other practical lessons in self-defense for crypto traders, after a series of gruesome crimes spooked the community. 

Pete Kayll, a musclebound veteran of Britain’s Royal Marines, had an unusual instruction for the Bitcoin investors gathered in Switzerland in late October.

“Just bite your way out,” he told them.

It was the final day of a weekend-long cryptocurrency convention on the shore of Lake Lugano, near the Italian border. A small group of investors had lined up in a conference room to have their hands bound with plastic zipties. Now they were learning how to get them off.

“Your teeth will get through anything,” Mr. Kayll advised. “But it will bloody well hurt.”

Most people don’t go to an international crypto conference expecting to learn how to gnaw through plastic. But after hours of panels devoted to topics like Bitcoin-collateralized loans, these investors were looking for something more practical. They wanted to know what to do if they were grabbed on the street and thrown into the back of a van.

Already paranoid about scams, hacks and market turmoil, wealthy crypto investors have lately become terrified about a much graver threat: torture and kidnapping.

This year, crypto investors or their families have been targeted by assailants more than 60 times, according to a tallies of public reports, a string of gruesome attacks that has shocked the industry and made headlines worldwide. In France, the father of a crypto influencer was found in the trunk of an attacker’s car — bound, beaten and covered in petrol. Thieves in Minnesota held a family at gunpoint for nine hours, demanding access to $8 million in crypto. And in Manhattan, prosecutors charged two men with kidnapping and torturing a crypto trader inside a luxurious 17-room townhouse.

In crypto circles, these episodes are known as “wrench attacks,” a reference to a widely shared cartoon in which a computer expert’s high-tech security is foiled by a thief who threatens to hit him with a wrench until he gives up his password.

The recent surge of wrench attacks has been fueled partly by the rising price of Bitcoin, which hit a record of $126,000 last month, minting a new generation of millionaires and even billionaires, many of whom have little personal security.

The basic mechanics of crypto also make it an appealing target. Unlike bank transfers, crypto transactions don’t require the authorization of a financial institution. They are instantaneous and irreversible. A kidnapper who demands ransom can see the money move on crypto’s public ledger and quickly whisk someone’s assets into a separate account. 

It was precisely that kind of situation that the investors in Lugano were desperate to avoid. They had gathered for a daylong “counter-kidnapping” workshop that was scheduled for the end of the Plan B conference, an annual Bitcoin gathering sponsored by Tether, one of the world’s biggest crypto firms.

The workshop’s organizer, Alena Vranova, an entrepreneur based in Prague, has conducted extensive research on wrench attacks, compiling data on the disturbing pattern of abductions.

“We have a surging epidemic of physical violence against crypto people,” Ms. Vranova said in an interview. “We are at one kidnapping and extortion per week. That’s quite brutal.”

Arguably the most gruesome assault came in January when David Balland, a founder of the crypto hardware firm Ledger, was kidnapped with his wife from their home in France. The attackers cut off one of Mr. Balland’s fingers and circulated an image of the mutilated appendage, demanding ransom paid in crypto. Part of the ransom was paid, and the local police located Mr. Balland and his wife after a 48-hour search.

The case had a disturbing resonance for Ms. Vranova, who helped start Trezor, a competitor to Ledger that develops hardware devices for the secure storage of cryptocurrencies.

“If they can take the co-founder of a hardware wallet, they can take anyone,” Ms. Vranova said.

In February, Ms. Vranova founded Glok, a business that is developing an app that crypto investors can use as a kind of panic button. It’s one of a number of countermeasures that have gained traction in the crypto world, as security firms rush to profit from the panic, offering bodyguards and other “white-glove protection” services.

Before the workshop, Ms. Vranova led a short seminar at the Plan B convention center in Lugano, where she flipped through a gruesome PowerPoint detailing one abduction after another. To a rapt audience of about 100 Bitcoin enthusiasts, she described an assault in Spain in which an executive was held captive in his home, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed and beaten by attackers who wanted access to 25 million euros in cryptocurrency....

....MUCH MORE 

With bitcoin having traded below $90,000 earlier today, the headline urgency may be falling but it is still wise to be aware of the risks. As a side note, I've not heard of anyone being kidnapped and tortured for their CryptoKitties. 

Also, don't anger German pensioners or dentists. See March 2023's:

"Fallen 'Crypto King' Who Owes Millions to Investors Was Kidnapped and Tortured"
I'm thinking he had it easy compared to the advisor who was kidnapped and tortured by a bunch of German retirees. Or the stockbroker who was kidnapped and tortured by a client dressed in a Santa suit....

Possibly of interest:

• News You Can Use: "The Economics of Kidnap Insurance"
• Insurance—"The business of kidnapping: inside the secret world of hostage negotiation"
• "Kidnapped by Pirates at Sea? Here's How Economics Can Save You"

And your pre-positioned superyacht getaway submarine:
"The Paranoid World of London's Super-rich: DNA-laced Security Mist and Superyacht Getaway Submarines"

Finally, having made your escape, here's an approach slightly different from the U.N./EU tactics:
"Dealing with Pirates (and terrorists) Russian Style