After violent abduction, cryptocurrencies hire bodyguards

In the early morning of January 21, David Baland and his wife were forced under shooting in individual vehicles outside their home in Mereo, a commune in the luxurious Loire Valley, France. The abductors were targeted at Balland, which was complicit in the cryptocurrency portfolio LedgerThe purpose of winning ransom, according to a prosecutor.

The abductors report their requests – the specifics of which are not revealed by the law enforcement authorities – of éric Larchevêque, another co -founder of the main book. To discard the full payment, they tore one of Balland’s fingers. The French authorities sent more than two hundred officers for investigation.

On January 22, the officers saved Baland from a property in the neighboring town of Shathouru. They later found his wife – alarmed, but otherwise unharmed – in the back of a beaten van.

These events were betrayed by Paris Prosecutor Lore Becquua in A Press conference on January 23rd and in subsequent reportsS Authorities have arrested ten people suspected of being abducted, Beccuau reported. For acts of “torture, barbarism and extortion,” she said, the arrested are confronted with life imprisonment if convicted.

Ledger declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation and the need to give BALAND confidence. In X post The CEO of Ledger Pascal Gauthier said: “We are deeply relieved that David and his wife have been released.”

The ominous abduction – which came shortly after cryptocurrency ransom in Canada and on murder By the Executive Director of United Healthcare – astonished cryptocurrency. In order to protect themselves, wealthy cryptocurrencies turn to bodyguard services that have experienced an influx of requests, sources of knowledge of the physical security sector say Wired.

“Like any human emotion, fear is an important motivator … The titles certainly mobilize a lot of this anxiety,” says Adam Hillie, a former maritime and CEO at Crypto-Focused Cybersecurity Company 70, which often helps the industry’s contacts to be ensure provided physical security services. “The demand has grown significantly.”

Since no case of abduction or extortion has been reported, it is difficult to objectively evaluate the actual risk of rich numbers in cryptocurrency. By making the fear of abduction more, the titles benefit from private security companies, stimulating themselves to overestimate the threat.

However, it is that people who control large quantities of cryptocurrency are more exposed violence than the typical CEO of the nature of technology: unlike regular currency, crypto is stored in digital portfolios, protected only from alphanumeric keys. Because crypto transactions are irreversible, if a bad actor can force someone to convey their key, they get unlimited access to the coins in their portfolio.

“This is one of the principles on which the crypto-dincape of self-residence is founded. Not your keys, not your cryptocurrency, “says a Crypto CEO, who had previously used the bodyguard protection that requested to remain anonymous from personal safety reasons. “This is the equivalent of filling (your money) with your mattress.”

Over time, cryptocurrencies take steps to dilute the risk associated with self -residence, including by storing coins in special portfolios that require a signature of multiple people for all transactions. Sometimes they come to the fact that they split the wallet keys into several pieces, each of which can be stored in a separate high -security hopper All over the world. But even complicated measures have only been so far as to deter abduction and attempt to blackmail.