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 to steal their personal keys.
“Each week, there’s a Bitcoiner, at the least one on the earth, who will get kidnapped, tortured, extorted, and typically even worse,” Vranova told 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 searching for a goal. She added:
“What appears to be an issue just for Bitcoin OGs shouldn’t be actually the case. We have now seen circumstances of kidnappings for as little as $6,000 value of crypto, and we’ve seen folks murdered for $50,000 in crypto.”
The rise in wrench attacks against crypto holders is a disturbing development, with bodily assaults in opposition to Bitcoiners in 2025 on monitor to double the worst year on record, prompting personal safety countermeasures from traders, builders, and trade 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 acquire delicate person data underneath know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, and different centralized software program suppliers who acquire consumer information, enable violent criminals to focus on crypto holders and their households.
“We at present have greater than 80 million Bitcoiner and crypto person identities leaked on-line; 2.2 million out of these comprise house addresses,” Vranova stated.
These assaults are correlated with Bitcoin costs, and the frequency of the assaults rises throughout bull markets, she added.
In Could, crypto alternate Coinbase disclosed an information breach that leaked the information of a small subset of Coinbase clients, which included house 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 forms of focused scams designed to steal person information and funds.
Journal: Bitcoiner sex trap extortion? BTS firm’s blockchain disaster: Asia Express
