Headlines were made here in New Zealand about a recent abduction attempt upon the family of a crypto exchange and payment system provider in France. Fortunately the attempt was unsuccessful, owing to intervention by members of the public: bravo to them.
Violence in all it's forms is condemned here, and this kind of organized crime being perpetrated against crypto operators is wholly unsurprising to a jaded critic like myself. There is no honour amongst thieves, and like it or not, to dabble in crypto is to embroil oneself in the world of fraud. The safest option is simply to not be involved, yet this does not excuse or condone such attacks either.
I expect and support France to protect it's citizens from this kind of thing. The French Ministry of Interior (Ministère de l´Intérieur) is set to meet on Friday to discuss the matter. I'm not a French citizen, but if I was I'd have some related concerns and questions of a social justice nature:
- Is the public attention and response to this kidnapping disproportionate, due to wealth or public profile?
- If ransoming in general is becoming more common, according to statistics, how does crypto facilitate or impede this?
Here in New Zealand, the article reached our shores as a crypto-interest story, rather than a human interest or crime story. I announce that because other, equally condemnable kidnappings did not make headlines, like the recent abduction of a 77 year old. Which was an actual and not attempted one and so prompts the question, do we value "crypto" entrepeneurs more than the elderly?
Maybe that is a question for RNZ and Stuff who brought the article to our shores, while other kidnappings in France go unreported here. All this violence is condemned without a second thought, and also without losing sight of the fact crypto remains a system of fraud, tax avoidance and worse: I would not involve myself in it thinking the Leopards wouldn't eat my face.
However the widespread belief crypto has legitimacy (despite not registering under pertinent securities regulations) gives people one-eyed views on the situation, painting clear lines where they do not exist. There are many victims of deception in crypto, but it's still all fraud, so long as it rejects the securities laws and acts like it is above regulation because some facade of innovation was sold under false pretences as structurally new cryptography. Block-chaining predates Bitcoin's often-supposed invention of it, bit-torrent wouldn't work without a DHT.
Nothing in Bitcoin was new, even at the time it was new, and the attractive 'features' such a scheme introduced is mainly of interest to criminals and fraudsters. If regulators 'cleaned up' crypto there would be nothing left of it, other than a few retirement funds who drank the crypto Kool Aid, not knowing what an obvious scam it is due to lacking prerequisite knowledge in the domain of computer science.
Dreams are free, and if there was balance in the world, RNZ, The Herald and Stuff (our most-read news outlets) would have given equal prominence to the crypto millionare accused of murdering a journalist in Malta: Daphne Caruana Galizia, for investigating the hiding of wealth in it. Any suggestion crypto entrepeneurs are the majority victims in all this must be met with the utmost scepticism. The accused in that case is out on bail also highlighting the absurdity and injustice of cash bail, but that's another story.
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