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 and steal their personal keys.
“Each week, there’s a Bitcoiner, no less than one on the earth, 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 traders could be on the radar of violent criminals on the lookout for a goal. She added:
“What appears to be an issue just for Bitcoin OGs isn’t actually the case. Now we have seen instances of kidnappings for as little as $6,000 value of crypto, and we’ve seen individuals murdered for $50,000 in crypto.”
The rise in wrench assaults towards crypto holders is a disturbing pattern, with bodily assaults towards Bitcoiners in 2025 on monitor to double the worst yr on report, prompting private security countermeasures from traders, builders, and business executives.
Associated: Wrench assaults drive crypto traders to centralized custodians
Centralized information leaks enlarge the wrench assault menace
Knowledge leaks from centralized crypto exchanges, which gather delicate consumer info beneath know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, and different centralized software program suppliers who gather consumer information, permit violent criminals to focus on crypto holders and their households.
“We at the moment have greater than 80 million Bitcoiner and crypto consumer 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 trade Coinbase disclosed a knowledge breach that leaked the data of a small subset of Coinbase prospects, which included residence addresses and different figuring out info.
In June, a report from Cybernews uncovered databases containing greater than 16 billion leaked consumer 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 forms of focused scams designed to steal consumer information and funds.
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