Alena Vranova, founding father of SatoshiLabs, warned of the rise in wrench assaults, bodily assaults and abductions carried out towards Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto holders in an try to steal their personal keys.
“Each week, there’s a Bitcoiner, not less than 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 buyers may be on the radar of violent criminals searching for a goal. She added:
“What appears to be an issue just for Bitcoin OGs just isn’t actually the case. We’ve got seen instances of kidnappings for as little as $6,000 price of crypto, and now we have seen folks murdered for $50,000 in crypto.”
The rise in wrench assaults towards crypto holders is a disturbing development, with bodily assaults towards Bitcoiners in 2025 on observe to double the worst yr on report, prompting private security countermeasures from buyers, builders, and trade executives.
Associated: Wrench assaults drive crypto buyers to centralized custodians
Centralized knowledge leaks enlarge the wrench assault risk
Knowledge leaks from centralized crypto exchanges, which acquire delicate person data beneath know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, and different centralized software program suppliers who acquire 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 dwelling 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 change Coinbase disclosed an information breach that leaked the knowledge of a small subset of Coinbase prospects, which included dwelling addresses and different figuring out data.
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 kinds of focused scams designed to steal person knowledge and funds.
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