Thieves Are Now Using Actual Physical Violence to Get Bitcoin
Offline repercussions for the cryptocurrency.
With Bitcoin‘s rising price dominating conversation over recent months — including getting its first-ever Forbes rich list — the cryptocurrency has now made its way offline as a spate of robberies use physical violence to gain the currency.
Recent attacks have seen a Russian tourist captured in Thailand until he transferred around $100,000 USD worth of Bitcoin as well as the head of a Bitcoin exchange in Ukraine who was taken hostage until his company paid a $1 million USD ransom. Similarly, a man in New York was held captive by a friend until he paid almost $2 million USD worth of Ether. Due to Bitcoin’s anonymous nature, the police have found it difficult to track down the thieves in each of these cases although there are now companies specializing in tracking criminal transactions on the blockchain.
Despite the popularity of real life attacks from Bitcoin thieves, many criminals have already switched their focus to Litecoin.
