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 this planet, who will get kidnapped, tortured, extorted, and generally even worse,” Vranova told 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 is just not actually the case. We’ve seen circumstances of kidnappings for as little as $6,000 price of crypto, and we have now seen folks murdered for $50,000 in crypto.”
The rise in wrench attacks against crypto holders is a disturbing development, with bodily assaults towards Bitcoiners in 2025 on monitor to double the worst year on record, prompting personal safety countermeasures from buyers, builders, and business executives.
Associated: Wrench attacks drive crypto investors to centralized custodians
Centralized information leaks amplify the wrench assault risk
Knowledge leaks from centralized crypto exchanges, which gather delicate consumer data below 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 stated.
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 a knowledge breach that leaked the information 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 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, identification theft, and different forms of focused scams designed to steal consumer information and funds.
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