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 and steal their personal keys.
“Each week, there’s a Bitcoiner, not less than one on the planet, who will get kidnapped, tortured, extorted, and generally even worse,” Vranova informed the viewers on the Baltic Honeybadger 2025 convention in Riga, Latvia.
She warned that even small crypto buyers will be on the radar of violent criminals in search of a goal. She added:
“What appears to be an issue just for Bitcoin OGs shouldn’t be actually the case. We’ve got seen instances 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 pattern, with bodily assaults in opposition to Bitcoiners in 2025 on monitor to double the worst 12 months on document, prompting private security countermeasures from buyers, builders, and business executives.
Associated: Wrench assaults drive crypto buyers to centralized custodians
Centralized knowledge leaks enlarge the wrench assault menace
Knowledge leaks from centralized crypto exchanges, which accumulate delicate person data below know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, and different centralized software program suppliers who accumulate consumer knowledge, permit violent criminals to focus on crypto holders and their households.
“We presently have greater than 80 million Bitcoiner and crypto person identities leaked on-line; 2.2 million out of these comprise residence addresses,” Vranova mentioned.
These assaults are correlated with Bitcoin costs, and the frequency of the assaults rises throughout bull markets, she added.
In Could, crypto change Coinbase disclosed a knowledge breach that leaked the knowledge of a small subset of Coinbase clients, which included residence 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, id theft, and different sorts of focused scams designed to steal person knowledge and funds.
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