Alena Vranova, founding father of SatoshiLabs, warned of the rise in wrench assaults, bodily assaults and abductions carried out in opposition to Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto holders in an try to steal their personal keys.
“Each week, there’s a Bitcoiner, a minimum of one on this planet, who will get kidnapped, tortured, extorted, and typically even worse,” Vranova instructed the viewers on the Baltic Honeybadger 2025 convention in Riga, Latvia.
She warned that even small crypto traders might be on the radar of violent criminals searching for a goal. She added:
“What appears to be an issue just for Bitcoin OGs isn’t actually the case. We now have seen circumstances of kidnappings for as little as $6,000 price of crypto, and we now have seen individuals murdered for $50,000 in crypto.”
The rise in wrench assaults in opposition to crypto holders is a disturbing development, with bodily assaults in opposition to Bitcoiners in 2025 on monitor to double the worst yr on document, prompting private security countermeasures from traders, builders, and trade executives.
Associated: Wrench assaults drive crypto traders to centralized custodians
Centralized knowledge leaks enlarge the wrench assault menace
Information leaks from centralized crypto exchanges, which gather delicate person info underneath know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, and different centralized software program suppliers who gather consumer knowledge, enable violent criminals to focus on crypto holders and their households.
“We at the moment have greater than 80 million Bitcoiner and crypto person identities leaked on-line; 2.2 million out of these comprise house addresses,” Vranova mentioned.
These assaults are correlated with Bitcoin costs, and the frequency of the assaults rises throughout bull markets, she added.
In Might, crypto trade Coinbase disclosed a knowledge breach that leaked the data of a small subset of Coinbase clients, which included house addresses and different figuring out info.
In June, a report from Cybernews uncovered databases containing greater than 16 billion leaked person login credentials from platforms like Apple, Fb, and Google.
The password leak negatively impacts crypto holders, who will now be topic to elevated phishing, social engineering, hacking, identification theft, and different sorts of focused scams designed to steal person knowledge and funds.
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