CEO of a (different) Canadian crypto company here.
Two things are simultaneously true in Canada right now: 1) the government has become unwilling/unable to actually keep repeat violent offenders in jail (and has totally failed to prevent them from acquiring illegal firearms), and 2) the law essentially outlaws the use of any tools (firearms, pepper spray, knives) for the express purpose of self-defense.
It's functionally impossible to get a concealed carry permit in Canada. They just don't issue them, even if you have a restricted firearms license, even if you're a high-profile individual, and even if there's an immediate threat to your life. You have to rely on police and, if you can afford them, expensive private security who probably can't carry a firearm either. I should note that the kidnappers in this case (plural) were all armed.
The politicians, of course, are protected by the armed Parliamentary Protective Service. They just don't believe you deserve similar protection.
The article claims violent crime is up 30% over the last decade. An important note the article only mentions in the subtitle is that this is recorded crime.
So recording might have gotten better/loose or the methodology is super stable and violent crime exactly as it was defined 10 years ago is up.
This seems unlikely, but plausible.
From the article though:
“The top violent crimes in 2023 were assault not using weapons or resulting harm, uttering threats, and assault employing weapons or resulting in harm.”
To me the recording of “uttering threats” pops out as something that would easily change depending on society’s sensitivities.
I am not saying violent crime isn’t up. These are just some thoughts that I wish were addressed in the article. The article doesn’t go into any of the recording methods and possible changes in what is categorised as a certain type of crime that could also impact the stats.
Sounds like Seattle, the police cannot chase criminals who steal cars, use them to brake into businesses and then drive off with the ATM in the back. The last is so left there that they are not allowed to chase them.
the event you're likely referring to is a cop that pursued without authorization and was reprimanded. this is a good thing, cops should get permission before going on a wild car chase
Like another commenter has replied, not only are you factually incorrect, you are incorrect on a moral level, because your argument is that if the statistics show that more bad things happen with guns acquired legally, then that somehow trumps an individual's right to self-defense.
It does not and I hope you never get into a situation where you have to experience that choice for yourself.
> then that somehow trumps an individual's right to self-defense.
As a note, you don't have individual rights. That is a man made concept. You only have the rights that other humans grant you. There is no universal tablet of morals or rights, inscribed into the fabric of reality.
That's a very cynical viewpoint and one that's not very easy to convince people of. I don't think it's a very moral stance to take either because it can be used to justify immoral stances. There have always been actions in human society that are held as reprehensible regardless of time or culture that would seem to imply the opposite (or at least that the majority of people who live or have lived at the very least believe in the opposite being true)
It might not be to people's liking, but unfortunately it's just the truth. Human's have had what we would now consider absolutely awful "moral codes" throughout history. The only real truth is "might makes right".
It's a realistic view point. I'm gay and I don't delude myself on the fact it can be dangerous to express that in public. No matter "how far we've come" "we don't need pride parades anymore" etc.
Sorry, didn't see your response until today. But I'd argue that those two truths aren't incompatible with one another. Something can be an innate human right and also perceived poorly within a given culture at that moment in time. Someone not respecting a human right doesn't mean that the right doesn't exist. It's just being infringed. "Individual human rights don't exist" seems like a defeatist statement to me and also (looking at religion) doesn't seem to be one believed in by the majority of humans throughout history (though the nature of what is and isn't a right is probably what is usually argued about). There are some things that seem to be universally frowned upon in just about every culture (like unjustified, by their definition of unjustified, murder, rape, etc.) The idea of human rights should be sacred and inarguable because the alternative leaves room for pushback against them.
It is 1. A deterrent and 2. Accidents are just a result of poor training and 3. The amount of defensive gun use is exceptional, it does not get reported on purpose due to state propaganda in Canada, America, and so on.
Also all concealed carry holders regularly train, much of it is for fun, and their skills rival or surpass law enforcement.
>Also all concealed carry holders regularly train, much of it is for fun, and their skills rival or surpass law enforcement.
I generally disagree with your other bullets points, but this statement is so absurdly inaccurate I feel the need to call it out explicitly. It is absolutely not true that all concealed carry holder fit this description. Not even a majority of the concealed carry holders that I know do. It is, quite honestly, a fantasy.
(I am generally pro-gun rights combined with smart gun restrictions laws)
You are likely right, not all concealed carry permit holders practice, but cops practice even less, and generally are worse-trained to carry a firearm.
Instead of training in the legality of use of force, and to hit a target with a bullet, like most CCP holders get, cops get training that everyone is a potential enemy, and to spray and pray first, ask questions later. Considering they're essentially immune to going to prison when this goes poorly, the result is often bad.
guns don't really seem to be much of a deterrent in the US, instead gun crime is way up.
and what's worse is it becomes an "arms race" at the individual level. many people end up buying guns because everyone else already have guns (especially criminals), so they feel obligated to acquire guns to defend themselves from other people with guns. it's a vicious cycle.
the ideal solution is to keep the gun supply low all together, meaning your average criminal are much less likely to have guns, which is what most countries do.
not only that, having a massive amount of guns around & having a culture of guns probably directly leads to school shootings.
The ideal solution is that the government demonstrates overwhelming effectiveness at stopping violent crime so people won’t feel the need to have a self defense gun
This is starting to look like a recurring theme. A similar incident happened this summer in Estonia [0], kidnappers from abroad travelled to Tallinn for the express purpose of kidnapping the owner of a crypto casino who resides there. Like it or not, information about wealth is starting to look like a serious safety concern, especially in crypto where retrieving the funds later is practically impossible.
> It sounds more like being involved in crypto than being publicly wealthy is a security concern. Which is unsurprising.
In Munich we have a serious problem with watch-robbers snatching people's expensive watches while driving on a motorcycle. Utterly insane but also utterly profitable if you have channels where to sell stolen watches.
I looked it up, these are like $100k->$500k watches being stolen.
How often is that actually happening?
Also, this seems like it could easily be an insurance scam. It seems just a little insane for someone to be casually walking around with a half million dollar watch on their wrist and some thief just happens to know "Hey, that looks like a half million dollar watch!"
Often enough. One gang alone took 18 raids in about two years, making about 1.5 million euros [1] - it's about once a month the police actually bother to make a report. Even if one assumes they can get only half the price due to no heritage, 750k for 12 people tax-free, that's more than even experienced developers can net in a year.
> It seems just a little insane for someone to be casually walking around with a half million dollar watch on their wrist and some thief just happens to know "Hey, that looks like a half million dollar watch!"
That's the thing. Munich has a ton of luxury shops for obscenely rich tourists, a good scout is all it needs. Quite some victims actually didn't have insurance.
Rich people exist. If you think spending a million bucks on a watch makes someone an idiot, you have failed to internalize how rich a large number of rich people actually are.
Nevertheless it's one of the weirdest, most niche ways possible to flex wealth. Only true watch aficionados will be able to spot just how much money you had spent on that watch, but everyone can see how much the car you ride, your villa or private jet is worth.
It's very much a, I guess dog whistle? Hidden in plain sight secret handshake? I have one expensive watch left after my divorce/finance crash. When I wear that watch in certain circles it instantly elevates me to being considered legitimate.
Poor example but we had a sister company VP (but more a reports directly to the owner type roll) in the office from the UK and he keyed in on my watch instantly. Which led him to inquire my background and find out I hadn't always been a lowly IT Director, and he had a lot of conversations you wouldn't normally have with IT and trusted what I said way more than my boss the CFO (I know IT shouldn't be under a CFO), all because he saw my watch. Instant change for my standing in the company. It's lame but it's the world we live in.
A good watch can be a worthwhile investment. I recommend a non-trendy somewhat off name used one. Doesn't even need to be all that much. The one I got to keep is just a TAG and still is enough that they notice. Lawyers have treated me better. Heck even cops notice and treat me better. A good watch and a pair of good shoes (like some nice Italian boots) can make a world of difference in how interactions go. Lots of rich dudes wear Levi's so they aren't a tell you're a normie. But shoes and watch are. Just don't get something that gets dated quick because then you instantly have give them the ick. I've also had random women I've had drinks with straight up ask about it, that gives me the ick, even though I wore it specifically for them to notice, which is again ick. We're funny monkeys.
When you're that rich you are going to be surrounded by people with crazy expensive stuff, and exposed to media about crazy expensive stuff, so much, that it will be more obvious. Like how you don't have to be a watch aficionado to know that an Omega is more expensive than a Casio; you just have to have heard people talking about "regular" vs "expensive" watches and seen some commercials and such. Same deal, just now talking about "regular" watches is a much higher baseline.
(I think this is related to how "a million dollars" still sounds impressive because of the change from 6 to 7 digits even though it's not nearly as much money as it used to be. A lot of people have super-dated signifiers for what "really rich" means because of the persistent anchoring of the terms.)
> it's one of the weirdest, most niche ways possible to flex wealth
What you're saying here is factually incorrect, it's actually the most enduring and widespread way to flex wealth, and it has been common to nearly all cultures for thousands and thousands of years.
In fact this behavior is apparently so innate to our existence that it seems to have developed completely independently in isolated societies. Both the Queen of England and the Aztec King had the habit of draping their body in hand-crafted finework jewelry, precious metal, and gems.
The phenomenon is shared by neighborhood drug dealers, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, wealthy Chinese heiresses, and Polynesian village chiefs. And maybe your wife.
> The phenomenon is shared by neighborhood drug dealers, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, wealthy Chinese heiresses, and Polynesian village chiefs. And maybe your wife.
At least I am certain my wife doesn't like much jewelry besides our self-made marriage rings (something I can only recommend to do for anyone wishing to get married!) and earrings, and I'm just the same :'D
But still, it is a thing mostly seen in the rich elites - everyone else (outside of rappers and drug dealers) doesn't do it.
The thing with a $500k watch is it keeps its value. It might even increase in value. So it's not a frivolous waste of money, you can get most of it back unless you break or lose it.
In Singapore it's not uncommon. Cars are taxed enough[1] to mean most people who'd drive a Porsche find other ways to display their wealth.
[1] "For example, a new standard Toyota Camry Hybrid costs around S$250,000 in Singapore, which includes the cost of a COE and taxes. That is about six times more expensive than in the US." .... "The lowest COE for a car costs S$104,000"
Not necessarily. They have old car auctions for wealthy people (like Barrett-Jackson) where certain models really do fetch as much as owners paid for them, or more. It's still a gamble, but I think your odds of at least holding your value with a classic car are much better than with a watch.
I could be wrong of course; I know a lot more about cars than I do overpriced luxury watches, after all. But I suspect the watches are much more like diamonds: only "valuable" to the initial buyer (and mainly for sentimental reasons), and largely worthless to everyone else. (Yes, a resale market for used Rolexes and the like exists, but you're not going to get the same price for your 20-year-old Rolex as you paid for it.)
Oddly enough I live in a very small town where it's a point of pride to drive in and about with cars from the 1920s, 30s and 40s .. tractors from the 1950s are in use on back market garden paddocks, etc.
It's a state "founders" town and there's a lot of generational wealth being flexed keeping old stuff running and in use.
It's modern John Deere's etc on the 4,000 acre farms of course, but still driving a "classic" farm truck to town because it was Granddad's first truck and renno'd when it was found at the back of the old barn.
I mean if you can move that watch in a way that doesn't get you caught for 1/4 of it's retail price, twice a year, that's a decent salary. Doesn't need to happen all that much.
Right, but that requires there to be an identifiable and large enough population of people wandering around with such watches on their wrists.
I guess what I'm saying is I can understand a lot better how the "kia boyz" thing happened. There are a lot of easily identifiable kias everywhere. But luxury watches just seems so niche that it's hard to think someone stealing them would be a crime wave.
> But luxury watches just seems so niche that it's hard to think someone stealing them would be a crime wave.
Well, you won't see that happening in a small village. Not enough people wearing expensive watches there. But in large cities with a huge amount of both domestic and foreign rich people it's bound to develop.
As long as you have a good spotter able to determine if someone is wearing a watch worth barely a few hundred dollars (or less, knockoffs are a thing) or a legit 50k upwards luxury watch, it's one of the more profitable ways of criming: no weapons or drugs involved which tends to yield much harder sentencing in most jurisdictions, less chance of bystanders intervening like in a conventional robbery (most people don't even realize what has happened until they see the motorcycle speeding away), less chance of the victim fighting back or attracting help, almost no chance of getting caught on camera, and the stolen goods are innocuous to carry around - unlike with guns or drugs, if you get in a traffic control or whatnot, the chance that the cop will ask about the watch you're wearing is almost zero because your average cop has zero idea if you're wearing a 5000 dollars Rolex or a 50k dollars Rolex.
I've heard of that in Europe for more than a decade, and started hearing it in San Francisco for about 2-3 years. The usual "SF is a hellhole" complainers act like it's unique to here.
1. Handle in large quantities. The ransom paid here was $1 million. With crypto, transferring that much is a few keystrokes. With cash, it's basically a large bag of cash that needs to be moved around.
2. Hold for ransom. Given point #1, kidnappers (of people and data) know that it's much easier to demand payment of large amounts in crypto than cash. If you kidnap a rich person in the crypto world, kidnappers know it's easy for him to sign over a very large amount of bitcoin quickly, which looks to be what happened here. Even for a very wealthy person, it's not logistically easy to get a million dollars in cash, never mind hand it over in a way that isn't a huge risk for the kidnappers.
3. Launder. Crypto tumblers are still a thing despite US government crackdown. Laundering cash with recorded serial numbers is much harder.
I'm not denying that crypto may have some legitimate uses, but it's basically a dream come true for criminals.
If criminals know somebody holds a significant amount of crypto, such as the CEO of a crypto company, they don't need to have them contact somebody else to withdraw and deliver a large amount of physical cash. They don't need to convince anyone they're serious. If the victim has their phone with them or can remember a password, then the criminals just have to coerce the victim into making a transfer.
Arguably, this isn't even really kidnapping in the traditional sense. It's high-tech mugging.
Owning a significant amount of crypto-currency and carrying the ability to make a transfer around in your head or pocket is basically the same as carrying a suitcase full of cash.
Your comment that it is logistically easy for the random rich guy to buy large sum of crypto is simply not true. For one, you'd have to go through KYC which takes time, and you can't just open an account and buy 100k in crypto (yet alone millions) as you'd need a history of activity on your account and multiple limit increases.
True, but not in this mental exercise where the person is being held hostage. They would still need to liquidate assets and transfer to crypto, and also need connections to this type of seller. In that case, that’d probably already have it.
Crypto does have significant advantages (handling in large quantities and rapid payment, as you described) but it is meaningfully harder to launder since blockchains are public and forensics is straightforward. The DoJ and crypto forensics firms has posted about this at length.
You're just explaining why crypto is becoming increasingly popular for businesses in general: the tech works.
1. Yes, everything is recorded on the block chain, but tumblers work. But yes, I agree it's hard to move large amounts of money on the blockchain since it's public.
2. "You're just explaining why crypto is becoming increasingly popular for businesses in general" Citation definitely needed. I used to see "pay with Bitcoin!" in a couple places online about 5-8 years ago. I never see it now, and hardly anyone I know, even big time "crypto people", actually use crypto to buy anything. Almost all the "uses" I hear are speculation or criminal uses. The only legitimate use I've actually seen is cross-border payments.
> it's hard to move large amounts of money on the blockchain since it's public
This was a $1mm ransom. The attraction of crypto isn't that it's easy to launder. It's that it's easy to steal. Beat a crypto bro on the head and you know you can effect a verifiable, irreversible transfer. Wiring money involves many more steps and has all kinds of reverse options.
Just look at all the movie plots that hinge on "ransom payment gone wrong" scenes, where the actual handing over of payment results in some kidnappers getting killed. With crypto, it just becomes "send a large amount of bitcoin to address X by date Y, otherwise we start shipping you various body parts of the kidnappee on dates Y+1, Y+2, etc." This dynamic is also the reason ransomware is so effective.
Not that many people keep a big stack of physical cash under their pillow, and organisations that do keep cash are well-known robbery targets (e.g. banks, mints).
It's substantially harder to kidnap someone and force them to sell their business and then give the cash to you than it is to make them transfer their crypto. And realistically most people's wealth will be in a company or some shares, etc.
This mindset can only be born of stability. If your country descends into chaos, having money on hand is better than having money in a bank, and therefore, not on hand.
Silver coins is my bet. I'm not a prepper by any means, but I always keep some silver on hand. If nothing else, they make good gifts for kids. They feel like little pirates when you give them silver coins.
I buy, restore, and sell woodworking and metalworking tools and vehicles. If I did it full time I could have that much on hand. I think I have like 25k in case a really good deal pops up, and it's a very side gig.
In which case you really shouldn't tell a public forum about it.
Maybe it's my jaded European mindset, but - rich people have been a target since the dawn of civilization, flaunting wealth is a good way to attract attention from bad people.
The chances of someone finding me through this public forum are very low. Following this username takes you to a person from Reddit who I am not. If you follow the clues in my posts, you'll narrow it down to a farmer who also works in colleges, and who lived in the Midwest at some point, but doesn't anymore, and whose parents live in an area of the world that is kind of arid. There's a lot of those type of people.
I'm more concerned about locals finding out. That's why I don't talk about the cash I have on hand in my real life, ever.
That's insane and irresponsible. There's a reason that you can't make large "cash" purchases in physical cash - even with a certified or cashier's check you're limited to under $50k total or $100k/day before getting into private banking where your limits are higher.
>There's a reason that you can't make large "cash" purchases in physical cash
I don't understand what you mean with this.
And also, yes you can? I've purchased cattle (~100k) and vehicles (5-40k) with cash.
It's not insane and irresponsible. I legitimately do not understand your attitude with that. As long as you don't walk around with 100k in your hand waving it around, what's the danger? The world isn't as bad as the news would have you believe.
Also, Some people prefer doing business without involving electronics. I've bought things using cash, silver, canning jars, and baseball cards. I prefer to barter for goods and labor, but some people prefer cash. What's the problem with that?
Had a Ukrainian girlfriend that had $25,000 in her go bag, just in case. She was not even close to wealthy and that was a considerable fraction of her yearly salary. She was the complete opposite of a criminal.
> It sounds more like being involved in crypto than being publicly wealthy
Maybe for now. The cryptocurrenty ricb are lower hanging fruit for sure, but crypto also make other kinds of kidnapping easier so I doubt it will remain soley in that realm.
I'm not buying it. There are regulated and under/non-regulated financial institutions. Coinbase is regulated. Eastern European casino/crypto is under/non-regulated. Under/non-regulated financial institutions attract fraud and crime like software developers to an online news aggregate.
Similar thing almost happened in a small town I used to live in. A local teen had accumulated a bunch of crypto, probably bragged about it somewhere online, and there was a group of half a dozen or so teens from another state who traveled to our town with plans to kidnap the local teen and force him to give them his crypto. Someone tipped off the local sheriff, who intercepted and arrested the out of state teens before they could actually kidnap the local teen.
Not long ago the father of Luis Diaz, a famous Colombian soccer player that plays for Liverpool was kidnapped for ransom money by a armed group in Colombia, the official declaration is that he was returned without paying the ransom -but people highly doubt that to be true-, anyone whose wealth is public knowledge is at risk, specially in countries with organized crime. As you may guess his father and other close relatives no longer reside in Colombia.
I've said this explicitly for years... in this forum... everyone is going to love crypto until the kidnappings start. Anonymous transfers of large sums of money are rarely beneficial except in societies where crypto is already illegal.
That works for digital money and cash too, there have been many cases where people get forced at gun point to take out money from ATMs.
Cryptocurrencies have the unique protection that _nobody_ who does not have the keys can access the funds. No system by itself can protects against violence resulting in coerced access.
> That works for digital money and cash too, there have been many cases where people get forced at gun point to take out money from ATMs.
Not with the ease with which you can transfer an unbounded amount of crypto. Completely different situation. The lack of any kind of fraud or theft protection or need to physically access cash is a great reason to not ever cop to owning crypto.
No, but there is a pretty small set of people who can access the information. It's not like anyone with a grudge can link a Bitcoin address to a real life person.
While it's very hip to make fun of crypto bros, this isn't unique to crypto. You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU for example, since business registries are open (who owns how much of what company) as well as yearly financial statements (how much are the company's assets worth in a fiscal year). This isn't unique to the EU, it's simply the market I'm personally more familiar with, but I hope you see my point.
What makes crypto unique in this setting is that it's easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact.
It's not just about receiving the ransom, but how easy it can be to access the original funds.
The story of, say, someone successfully kidnapping Bezos in a lightning operation and trying to take a good bite of his wealth is quite different than the same if you kidnapped Satoshi while he has access to his keys. It's not even in the tracing, but how much you can take away successfully, and how fast.
It's about ransom, not about keys. Fortune 500 company CEOs and such have a special insurance for the cases like this. There is an old movie Proof of Life about the topic.
While being held captive and done in a way that doesn't give away the location of the kidnappers? The larger the loan Bezos takes, the harder that will be.
The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation.
> easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact
This is actually less true than you assume (barring Monero). Crypto, and Bitcoin especially, is less (less, though not yet completely) of a Wild West due to Western nations enforcing KYC laws. Through this, addresses can be traced back to real people. Further chain analysis (Chainalysis is the name I'm most familiar with) allows investigators to follow the money through an immutible chain stretching back to 2008.
In short, Bitcoin is not private. It is arguably one of the least private ways to transact, considering the Blockchain will show the history of every wallet, and where every Sat started and ended. Unless you take enormous precautions, it can be traced back to you.
Whether the feds can get to you is another story, but one as old as time.
Apparently the tax returns in Norway for everyone are public information. I'm surprised this hasn't caused enough problems that we would hear about it in news articles.
Turns out that in a functioning society, it’s not a big deal if someone knows how much money you made last year. Thieves and kidnappers are not lurking around every corner after all.
Money and nudity are still the great taboos for Americans. These national obsessions must be closely guarded or some kind of calamity will consume the sinners who exposed their bodies and bank accounts.
In the US, compensation of top-earners of public companies (and non-profits) is public information in annual reports and, even if it weren't, you can pretty much assume a top exec of a large public company is fairly wealthy.
"Average" people may not share their wealth in general (in part because they may not want friends and family to know they have a lot of money) but it's no secret that the CEO or SVP of a Fortune 500 company has a ton of money.
I think it's less about morals and more about social safety net?
When you're at the bottom in a country that has decent safety nets for you isn't as bad as the US. And once you've done one crime, the rest get easier to justify, I would assume.
> You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU
I don't see how. Unless you're talking about a people who owns a significant percentage of a publicly-traded company, but that's most certainly not "any company owner". Probably less than 1% of the population.
The entries in EU business registries are public for all companies, not just publicly traded companies. You can check who owns how much of what company and you can also check their yearly reports. In most countries this comes at a small fee for the registry extract, but the information is readily available, in some countries it's even free. As an example, here's the Estonian business registry extract for the company Foobar OÜ (I'm not affiliated, I just searched for foobar) [0]. This is not a publicly traded company, yet you can see who owns the company in what fraction and if you download the latest annual report you can also see how much the company is worth.
This information is legally required to be available to prevent money laundering, fraud, other financial crimes, etc.
Business registries are no longer open, as there was a court case in Luxenbourg where one of Putin's fixers lobbied to get his private information closed.
Ultimate Beneficiar Ownership information can be only accessed by authorities.
Toyota Baltic Aktsiaselts is an EU company and it has a fake ‘beneficial owner’. But clearly some entity, or series of entities, must actually own it.
So it is an example of the information in at least one section being completely unreliable, with not even an attempt of an ‘owned by non-eu parent company’ disclaimer explaining why it’s fine to list a random senior manager as something that he’s clearly not…
It's also common for wealthy companies to have KNR (kidnap and ransom) insurance policies for their key people. It's not unlike why some companies have policies where the key people are not allowed to travel together so an incident doesn't take them all out at once.
Just another example of where crypto thinking they are hip/trendy for breaking the norms. Some lessons of bucking the traditional methods are gonna hurt more than others.
Any form of (extraordinary) wealth sooner or later will attract fearless men, who want to make it big and quickly.
Cortes for example when he found out where the empire's gold was hidden he kidnapped Montezuma. Pretty blatant criminal activity. In no history books is mentioned any kind of wrong doing by the gold side. Gold doesn't do stuff it is an inanimate object, only humans with agency can perform actions, and be guilty of them or innocent.
Victims of kidnapping for BTC, they can only hope BTC's price go to zero, long before 2030. By 2030 it's price will be 0 for sure, the economics of the blockchain ensure that, but they could be lucky and BTC's price crashes and zero's out the next 3 months or so. They will not be wealthy any more, the kidnappers will lose interest in them and throw them out in landfill somewhere, hopefully alive.
“Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely. Disregarding all of bitcoin's shortcomings, a financial instrument that brings out the worst in people—greed—won't change the world for the better.” —https://www.arscyni.cc/file/crypto_cult_science.html
Yes. Crypto is absolutely toxic. Just go into any crypto sub on Reddit. Any.
The only thing people care about is the price going up. They'll do anything for it to go up including lying to their friends and family. They'll do free marketing for the crypto they bought, hoping to get more people to buy into it. After all, crypto has no utility so the only way they can make a profit is if they entice more people to jump in.
Great thread on what it takes to do crypto in Russia :
"In contrast, Russian cryptobros that I know tend to act very, very lowkey. The fewer people know about your activities, the better. Posting about dealing with crypto in social media is absolutely unthinkable. Why? Because that makes you too easy and lucrative prey"
> 2. [Non-violent entrepreneurs] are an abnormality. They create prosperity, yes, but they may flourish only in the artificial environment where the high-end violent entrepreneurs are being (constantly!) wiped out. They're the hothouse flowers, to put it simply
> 3. Much of the outer world is destitute because of violent entrepreneurs. Violent entrepreneurs are not wiped out -> they wipe out the non-violent ones -> the country cannot create stuff -> It is destitute
> 7. Non-violent entrepreneurs have prospered under artificially secure conditions and having (unknowingly) outsourced their security. If they don't understand it, you'd be much better off ignoring their advice when it comes to security and foreign policy.
He’s alive and can get better security. Maybe it makes the problem worse for others, but this is a no brainer decision when your safety is on the line.
Why wouldn't you do this? If you know somebody's got a lot of bitcoin, you know everything is going to go perfectly.
You could do a kidnapping like this in a couple hours and make your dinner date. If the victim doesn't wise up and get bodyguards or get out of bitcoin, you could kidnap them two or three times.
If they are using multi-signature or some other setup you may need to kidnap a lot of people. So it does not necessarily require increasing physical security.
I don't want to speculate but I wouldn't be surprised if he planned it all along to run away with customer's money. Not unheard of in the crypto world. Hope he makes it home safe.
The fact that I'm watching comments like the one you're responding to get heavily downvoted, and then all of them suddenly propped back up speaks a lot to HN's hatred towards crypto.
I mean, I get it, there are plenty of reasons to dislike crypto bro's, but immediately suggesting that they kidnapped themselves without any other evidence is insane.
> but immediately suggesting that they kidnapped themselves without any other evidence is insane.
Insane, or a famous form of security fraud that is mitigated by centralized banking systems and therefore highly attractive for crypto-owners.
It's a heads-I-win tails-you-lose situation. They were either kidnapped because the attackers knew there was nothing the CEO could do to defend himself, or he kidnapped himself knowing it was plausibly deniable and couldn't be tracked through traditional means. In either case it's reasonable to examine the extenuating circumstances and wonder why cryptocurrency is such a large target for crime.
It's not insane to have that possibility come to mind -- but it's unfair to individuals to voice a snap accusation like that.
Why it's not insane to consider that: people know that the cryptocurrency space is full of the unethical, and have seen many rug pulls blamed on theft by some mysterious unknown other party.
But, even if a $1M kidnapping was one of the standard cryptobro scam exits (it's not; it's chump change), you'd want more evidence before you start accusing someone who might actually be a traumatized victim.
Yep. I worked in the space for 3 years and basically became a conspiracy theorist in some sense because of how messed up it is.
It looks as though only scam coins are allowed to succeed in the space and well-intentioned people are forced to become scammers or else they'll become a target of the SEC or some other gov entity. I've had some REALLY f*ed up interactions with major figures which are almost impossible to explain otherwise. Also in terms of funding, you will see government entities funding projects that are obvious scams over and over. These are not government entities from 'banana republics' BTW, these are western governments. It's not just the founders themselves who are corrupt, it's literally the government apparatus around it.
When you have various government entities actively supporting fraud, it creates an environment which is worse than lawlessness. Being an honest person in the space is untenable; you just wouldn't last.
It's not like that. I worked with some pioneers in the space who collected millions from the very early days and were within their rights to use those funds as they saw fit but they were coerced/forced into creating non-profit entities to hold the funds (the fact that they were forced was common knowledge at the time it happened) and then they started pouring money down the drain, actively preventing development of the tech and slandering/defaming anyone who tried to improve things. It culminated in them essentially redirecting all raised development funds towards their biggest competitor! This is all public info BTW and could easily be proved in court... Great, if you aren't worried about 'hidden' ramifications! Anyway, all this was done with the explicit approval of government entities. I saw all this happen in real time.
Also, one telltale sign is that they were allowed to get away with stuff which I later learned would have been in violation of regulations. This was a very high profile project that reached 3 billion+ market cap. It didn't fall under the radar. The government knew the whole time and was involved in all decisions.
I also saw some scam projects receive repeat funding from EU government entities in spite of having failed to deliver anything. Then they raised more funds for later projects.
It's kind of like wondering if a bloody deer by the side of the road got hit by a car. Like you don't have any evidence that it was hit by a car, it could just as easily have been hit by a boat, or a low flying airplane.
You’re ignoring the prior information of „it looks like an abduction“ though. That’s like seeing a dead body on the street and saying „well they look to be under 40, what are the odds that someone dies that young?“.
The real question would be „Did more claimed kidnappings of crypto CEOs turn out to be staged or were real?“.
Two things are simultaneously true in Canada right now: 1) the government has become unwilling/unable to actually keep repeat violent offenders in jail (and has totally failed to prevent them from acquiring illegal firearms), and 2) the law essentially outlaws the use of any tools (firearms, pepper spray, knives) for the express purpose of self-defense.
It's functionally impossible to get a concealed carry permit in Canada. They just don't issue them, even if you have a restricted firearms license, even if you're a high-profile individual, and even if there's an immediate threat to your life. You have to rely on police and, if you can afford them, expensive private security who probably can't carry a firearm either. I should note that the kidnappers in this case (plural) were all armed.
The politicians, of course, are protected by the armed Parliamentary Protective Service. They just don't believe you deserve similar protection.