So-called "wrench attacks" are more common as Bitcoin's value increases, reports say.
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Third suspect arrested after man was kidnapped and tortured for Bitcoin
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I was thinking the same. If I was tortured under similar circumstances I'd sing like a canary.
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Too bad there aren't any examples of such a situation one could refer to, to see what the result was, like, say, someone being held in a Manhattan townhouse for 3 weeks and being tortured for their quickly checkable bitcoin password.
Alas, we shall never know. puts wrist to forehead and swoons like a southern debutante
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That's just one example. One where the victim was able to escape, which seems like a confounding factor.
Give it a few months. More examples will show up.
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This is Ars, you want Reddit for /r/im14andthisisdeep
You literally didn't think this through. Like holy shit this post is so cosmically stupid.
The regulations say what you can't do. People obey the regulations because they get enforced.
So regulation + enforcement work together.
You should feel deep shame for the level of sheer stupidity and obliviousness of this post.
Take a stupid statement like this:
"durrr if 2+2 =4 then why do you need the second 2 to get 4, just use the 2! DUHH!!!"
What you just said was an order of magnitude dumber than that.
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So, then, if we unpack your comment, you believe that:
- Society does need armed enforcers
- Society does not need regulations
Therefore, presumably, society needs no rules to constrain or predict the actions of armed enforcers, yes?
I think there's a convenient, simple word for this particular simple belief system. Can't quite put my finger on it... Anybody want to help me out?
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Nope, you're drawing a false equivalence between acceptable self-expression and get-rich-quick financial schemes.
I'm not mincing words and you're misrepresenting my argument: I'm not saying "he provoked the attack he suffered," I'm saying "I feel no sympathy for someone who's actions I believe should be considered a felony."
The fact that this crime would likely have been prevented by the conventional protections of the banking system that cryptocurrency users willfully forgo is just hubris on top of an already unsympathetic victim in this story.
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AI is cool i guess
Ars Centurion
once “holding asset x” is equated with “committing a crime,” any violence that follows can be waved off as an unfortunate, but somehow deserved, by-product of greed, hubris, or whatever vice you want to project. It’s still victim-blaming; you’ve just replaced a short skirt with a hardware wallet.
quick audit
– holding btc is legal, full stop
– kidnapping and torture are not, full stop
– conventional regulated banking hasn’t prevented express-kidnap rings, ransomware paid in dollars, or ceos hiring security details
security lapses are operational errors, not ethical failures
same way leaving your iphone on a café table invites theft but doesn’t void empathy when it’s stolen
no one is asking you to love crypto
just don’t cheer the wrench because you dislike it
we can debate energy mix, kyc, proof-of-stake migrations later
first principles still apply: violence over private keys is violence over property, nothing more elevated than that
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If not the darkest timeline, this may be the one that's closest to being satire-proof.
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I won't go as far as to say he deserved what happened to him, just that I don't feel sympathy for a man who suffers while hurting others. I think he only deserves to be stripped of those assets and thrown in jail for a few years, it's just that my sympathies, my abilities to emotionally care about what happens to someone, run dry before we get through all of the suffering that happens to people who I perceive as innocent.
I'm not arguing that what happened to him is right, I'm not arguing that the torturers were justified, or that the torturers shouldn't be thrown in jail, or that torturing people should be considered an acceptable consequence for holding large sums of BTC, only that I don't actually care about the victim here.
Furthermore, your analogy doesn't hold up here as well as you think. The 'short-skirt' argument was always an attempt to demonize people who are culturally different from you for misogynistic reasons. I have good reasons to hate crypto holders: Their financial activities moves money for cybercriminals and hostile state-actors along with wasting energy that leads to more environmental pollution. You might not realize it, but your analogy directly likens misogyny to distaste for cybercriminals and pollution.
I don't think it should be, and I feel strongly enough about the fact that it should not be legal to regard BTC holders with the same level of respect that I hold for codified financial fraud. I personally disagree with the law in this regard, and believe that substantial BTC holders should not be allowed to walk this earth as free men. The fact that they are not in jail is a injustice in my eyes; the fact that it is legal by the letter of the law does not change the fact that I see it as injustice.
I recognize that the law does not reflect my own beliefs in this regard, and would prefer to see the law changed such that purchasing BTC becomes illegal. In the meantime, BTC holders will receive the same sympathies that I would give to other unpunished criminals who remain at large: Apathy and contempt.
It reduces the prevalence and the ability to conduct such operations. Welcome to reality, we have limited resources and work with imperfect solutions.
No, the part that voids empathy is the fact that the iPhone is being used to intercept the baking details of other café goers. You don't seem to understand this, it's not the lack of security that makes me say "I don't care what happens to him" it's the fact that he's doing something I believe to be gravely immoral.
I will not argue that the wrench is justice, justice would be a jail-cell. Nonetheless, when unjust things happen to unjust men, you will find people who laugh and smile from catharsis alone. I'm not rooting for the torturer, and what happened to the victim shouldn't have happened; that's not gonna stop me from snickering at the hubris though. Just don't mistake the snide jabs and remarks as actual approval for the torturers here. I'm sure the vast majority of people expressing the "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes" sentiment would still throw Woeltz in jail for his actions, despite any genuine disdain for the victim.
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Golly, I hardly even noticed that is just one example.
If only there was a systematic study done over a decade ago by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, about the torture the CIA performed on dozens of detainees, resulting in a 6,700+ page report that concluded "The CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining co-operation from detainees," for humanity to learn from so as to not have to repeat the same barbaric, inhumane follies. Not to mention the many other examples of studies and books stretching for over 400 years, referenced in that Scientific American article previously linked, all of which conclude similarly.
Guess we'll just have to wait a few month for
I'm gonna go watch me some Adam Driver, in the meantime.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcigrfTcuoc
Also, I'd like to mention that the man in the article only escaped after three weeks of torture.
So no, his escape is not a "confounding factor," as there were three weeks of torture, free of any "confounding" circumstance for you to try to use as an excuse.
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Did these people have a plan for not getting caught? It seems they did it in a way that would be all but impossible not to catch them.
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AI is cool i guess
Ars Centurion
asset ownership is not violence. wanting to cage peaceful holders because you dislike their ledger is the literal definition of authoritarian envy. if you need someone to hurt so you can feel better about the world, the problem is not the hardware wallet.
the same network you call pollution runs an average of 60 mw per eh and is already below flared gas waste in texas alone. cybercrime runs on dollars and email servers you (presumably) still use. blame the actor, not the protocol.
cool story. now swap btc with “vpn” or “encrypted messaging” and read it back. if the argument still sounds righteous to you, congrats: you just volunteered for the thought-crime police.
express kidnappings flourish in peso and dollar cash economies. the wrench meme exists because meatspace violence sidesteps any ledger. outlawing the ledger does nothing for the wrench.
by that logic every router admin is complicit in every phishing link that crosses their switch. tools are morally neutral; intent sits with the user.
laughing at torture because you dislike someone’s savings vehicle is the textbook “play stupid games” fallacy. it signals spite, not principle.
you’re the perfect storm of moral panic and envy economics: too online, high on imagined virtue, itching for a new class of untouchables so you can feel righteous. pure decel cosplay with a touch of authoritarian fantasy.
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A lot of the more notorious ones have been banned, Kamus and Incorrigible Bull (I think) being the ones who come to mind - in no small part due to how obnoxious their spiels were about how all of us no-coiners would regret our decisions, insisting that a golden age for crypto is surely coming and we would all suffer for not joining, claiming that there was no reason for us to join the great movement while also demeaning us for not doing so.
Which makes the complaints of AI is cool I guess about how insufficient sympathy has been given to the victim rather hypocritical. Those who have been the most invested in crypto, monetarily or ideologically, have made their disdain for the rest of us peons excessively clear. And now we're expected to have non-ironic thoughts and prayers for the victim. It's like asking for sympathy for the Sacklers.
Looking at the Coffeezilla take on all this, he does bring up a good point: the alleged actions of the arrested do not fit the profile of someone who is obsessed with privacy and covering his tracks. Getting caught in a bathrobe and taking photos of the evidence for cops to find? It's reasonable to think that there's more to the story.
I don't think this is the gotcha you think it is.
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This is a busted analogy because:
1) Lots of people want to toss out both.
2) Have you ever tried emergency braking without a seatbelt on?
3) Regulation is actually like making sure people don't drive at speeds at which they cannot safely stop and, indeed, preventing them from driving in ways that endanger others. You know, the rules of the road.
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The thing about being sexually assaulted is that the moral fault is entirely with the assaulter, so you're 0/2 on valid analogies.
It's arguably more akin to laughing at someone who figured out how to make money from arson, but whose own house just got burned down with all the cash inside. Being a crypto multi-millionaire or whatever starts you from a position of moral deficit - you've enriched yourself from a system that is only ever capable of being a net drag on society, and fundamentally any money you "earned" came from bag-holders, criminals laundering money, and victims of criminals trying to get their stuff back.
That's doesn't mean physical violence is necessarily what these people deserve - it's just an extremely predictable outcome of the way the system is set up, and they're dickheads helping to wreck the planet, so it's really hard to engage empathy when they hit the FO buffers.
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Sure, but second principles also apply, and most folks give less of a shit if a the victim of a burglary is themselves a burglar. It may not be "right", "legal", "elevated" or a form of "justice", but by gods it's gratifying at the very least.
If you insist on arbitrarily collapsing all possible morally addressable attributes like "being a financially exploitative shitweasel" down to neutral facts like "wearing a short skirt" then you can force out all sorts of off-base conclusions, but you're not going to persuade anyone, and insisting that there's a moral righteousness to your refusal to acknowledge nuance just makes it annoying on top of that failure.
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Golly, I hardly even noticed that is just one example.
If only there was a systematic study done over a decade ago by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, about the torture the CIA performed on dozens of detainees, resulting in a 6,700+ page report that concluded "The CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining co-operation from detainees," for humanity to learn from so as to not have to repeat the same barbaric, inhumane follies. Not to mention the many other examples of studies and books stretching for over 400 years, referenced in that Scientific American article previously linked, all of which conclude similarly.
Guess we'll just have to wait a few month forthe goalposts to shiftmore examples to come out.
I'm gonna go watch me some Adam Driver, in the meantime.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcigrfTcuoc
Also, I'd like to mention that the man in the article only escaped after three weeks of torture.
So no, his escape is not a "confounding factor," as there were three weeks of torture, free of any "confounding" circumstance for you to try to use as an excuse.
The distinction remains that the CIA were torturing people who didn’t necessarily know the information they were being asked about (e.g. being subject to extraordinary rendition because they shared a name with, or in some cases had a similar name to, a terrorist suspect) and, even if they did, the interrogators had no way of confirming if what they were being told was accurate and had been trained to believe (incorrectly) that applying more pain was the path to truth. Compare, for example, the NKVD who knew full well that they were extracting false confessions under torture during Stalin’s purges - the job at that point after all was to manufacture evidence against people Stalin perceived as his enemies - but were also quite able to extract accurate information from German prisoners during WW2 using the same techniques.
More on point there have been several cases in the UK where thieves successfully tortured victims for their debit and credit PINs (see e.g. here or here).
In the case discussed in the article they were after a passcode that could be confirmed or refuted almost immediately once the victim gave it over. The fact they were unable to extract it after an alleged three weeks of torture suggests that they were either incompetent at what they were doing (as any Russian security service officer will tell you, all you need is an afternoon, a hammer, a pair of pliers and a big knife to get anyone to tell you everything they know - Russian torture has traditionally focussed on smashing body parts with hammers), hadn’t fully committed to the bit (e.g. most of that 3 weeks was spent with the victim imprisoned and being threatened with the torture being relatively brief sessions of beatings and electric persuasion), restraining themselves because they didn’t want to leave marks that could serve as evidence or there’s something even weirder going on with this case than there seems at surface level (I’ve seen some reports that the victim was force fed cocaine and the torturers had printed up T Shirts with pictures of the victim smoking the crack they gave him which is… bizarre).
Alternatively the victim may just have had a massive tolerance for pain and nothing irreversible, such as chopping off fingers, was being done so he took it. For myself all I can say is that if someone went to work on my knees or elbows with a hammer I’d be happy to give them all the PINs and passwords they wanted and hope my insurance covers it.
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Being involved in cryptocurrency is not merely "owning an asset," it requires active engagement in immoral behavior that causes harm.
It's like pointing a gun at someone's head and saying "Hey, I'm just 'owning' this gun in my hand that is pointed at you. What's your problem with people owning stuff?!"
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in other bitcoin news:
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/gamestop-invests-500-million-in-bitcoin
https://www.extremetech.com/computing/gamestop-invests-500-million-in-bitcoin
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There are countless ways to hurt someone without violence. The only difference between taking a man's life savings at gunpoint and tricking him into handing it over is the trauma the victim endures. The only difference I can see between BTC trading and organized money laundering is how many questions you have to ask before you realize you're doing something wrong.
Admittedly, the pollution aspect is something that should be handled by making people pay for those externalities. The cybercrime though, that's a bigger problem and one that's more directly involved with cryptocurrencies. Banks, email servers, ISPs, etc. are run by authorities that are capable of taking steps to address the criminal enterprises that depend on them. And very often, they do attempt to address those things to the best of their ability while providing genuine utility to everyone else that outweighs criminal exploitation. Crypto neither has any means of addressing cybercrime dependent on it, nor does it provide utility that outweighs the criminal exploitation.
After replacing it and reading it back, it doesn't make sense to illegalize VPNs or Encrypted Messaging because those are genuinely valuable utilities for people, unlike BTC. I can't come up with any good reason to use BTC, everything you can legally do with it is better served with traditional banking or cash money. I can come up with good reasons to use VPNs and Encrypted Messaging. You can't just say "Banning BTC is like banning VPNs or encryption" and expect me to take that at face value, because I think you're completely wrong there.
You also need to check on your definition of "thought crime" because that term, at its most severe, refers to the policing of people's opinions, both expressed and withheld, you're using that term to refer to material actions, not violations of free speech protections or the sanctity of one's own mind.
In a cash economy, you're only that vulnerable if you store all your liquid assets in a mattress. Otherwise, the only money you have on the line, and the only money the wrench can take is what you carry on your person and reach without talking to another person.
Moving away from the metaphor and back to the point, avoidable vulnerability doesn't cause me to lose sympathy, misdeeds cause me to lose sympathy.
I am a spiteful person at heart and catharsis feels awesome; luckily the head knows better than to use raw emotional feelings when passing judgement.
You're probably right about me being too online, and definitely right about me being high on imagined virtue; but completely wrong after that. Fuck class, fuck unquestionable authorities, and fuck the notion that anything can be perfect.
I'm not looking for some "new class of untouchables," I want to burn the machine that lets one man fuck over another for personal gain. And unfortunately for BTC holders, the decentralized nature of their zero-sum games means that the only way to shut down that burden on humanity is target the people who use it; and it's why I only advocate for banning the purchasing of BTC: You don't need to ban holding it, people can just sit on dead wallets, BTC that doesn't move doesn't do anything; and you don't need to ban selling it, let people get out by selling off their holdings to people in other countries, crashing its value and more effectively killing BTC.
You're ascribing a lot of motivations to me that are just wrong, so I'll clear the air on why I hold these opinions: BTC and other cryptocurrencies are a blight on wider human society that we would all be better off without. Cryptocurrencies are that bad because they are decentralized and lack the mechanisms that allow us to easily govern and correct financial problems. Being decentralized does not mean they follow the will of the people or are free from authoritarian dictatorship; in fact, the only way for people to enact their will upon cryptocurrency markets is to levy their sovereign governments to enact sweeping, crude rules on how people are allowed to interact with cryptocurrencies. And I cannot stress this enough, people do not vote with their wallets, they make seemingly optimized individual decisions with their wallets that are ultimately easily manipulated and gamed by entities that command significant portions of their economy.
So when I say I want strict rules from the government on how people can interact with BTC, it's not because I want some unquestionable authority, it's because rules on BTC can only come from sovereign governance, or from a single BTC holder who controls enough BTC to unilaterally enact his will upon the entire market, you know, like an authoritarian dictator.
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