The increased regularity and severity of violent attacks against known owners of digital bearer assets has in recent times led users to demand and seek out more privacy-preserving solutions.
The downside of having your entire financial history broadcast to the world for anyone to see and analyze comes with potentially fatal risks to your and your loved one’s security and physical well-being.
Together with the ubiquitous introduction of outdated KYC measures — which do little to stop actual criminals while placing sensitive private data into the hands of organized crime cartels — the situation worsens. Time and again it has been shown: once data are uploaded to internet-connected databases, criminal organizations with billions in funding will gain access. The result is detailed target lists of who, where, and how much is up for taking.
The recent kidnappings and physical attacks in Europe and in other jurisdictions with diminished state capacity are not random. They are still on a relatively amateur level – but expect organized crime to become much more sophisticated in identifying and shaking down (identified) cryptocurrency owners.
“This is not how things should be and not what should happen!”
Welcome to the real world, fren.
Financial incentives rule, and bad people have few ethical concerns about taking what’s valuable to you for their own gain by whatever means available. You better begin to plan and act accordingly.
At BitcoinVN, we aim to provide our user base with access to best-practice tools to navigate the challenging times ahead as societies undergo economic and social disruption at an accelerated pace.
If you do not plan ahead, you will be blindsided – and even with your best efforts, all you can do is improve your odds “to make it through.”
One trendline remains clear: digital, globally accessible value transfers without borders are here to stay – and artificially imposed limits will always be routed around.
And while that trend will persist, despite efforts to control and stifle the flow of value across digital networks due to the inherent economic incentives and network design, preserving your privacy is a matter which should not take a backseat when interacting with these systems.
If ownership of coins is tied to your personal identity, you will immediately become a target for criminal organizations seeking to relieve you of your holdings.
They might not strike right away – but once you are on a list, they will wait for an opportune moment.
At “best”, the outcome is that you are “only” targeted in the digital realm via increasingly sophisticated attempts to compromise your security and gain access to your funds remotely.
However, once ownership of digital bearer assets is tied to your identity – your risk also increases on an exponential level in the physical realm.
This is not a theoretical risk!
Business partners and people close to us in our circles have been personally impacted to a very severe degree. Especially if you live in a jurisdiction with diminished state capacity (e.g. Western Europe), criminal gangs might see the opportunity to invite themselves to your home to help themselves.
While BitcoinVN continues to invest in Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, we remain agnostic toward alternative solutions that can help users safeguard their privacy – and with it, their families – from targeted attacks in both the digital and, increasingly, the physical world.
As such, we thank the Zcash community for their support in this matter and look forward to further collaboration opportunities.
