2025 has seen the personal risks to Bitcoin investors reach an all-time high, according to Alena Vranova, founder of hardware wallet maker SatoshiLabs. Speaking at the Baltic Honeybadger 2025 conference in Riga, Latvia, Vranova said:

“Every week, there is a Bitcoiner, at least one in the world, who gets kidnapped, tortured, extorted, and sometimes even worse.”

These attacks, often referred to as the “5-dollar wrench attacks”, are physical assaults, kidnappings and threats of violence to force victims to hand over their private keys – the digital passwords that control access to their bitcoin holdings.

Many assume these attacks only target wealthy early…

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