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I can’t imagine linking the fact I have 13 million dollars of anonymous, non refundable, easily stolen currency back to my real identity.
True-Anon did an episode on this last year. Either it happened to the same people a couple of times or there were a spate of them someone was involved with
A recent report from cybersecurity firm Certik showed 72 documented instances of wrench attacks across the globe in 2025 — a 75% spike from the year prior — though the company said the crimes are certainly underreported.
This is good for Bitcoin
A lot of times torture doesn’t work. The CIA had lots of problems with it. Especially over short times. They found you have to wear people down over weeks or months. Freezing cells, punishment loaf, no toilet, loud heavy metal music, no sleep for days, and even then it’s not reliable. Then, like in the Clint Eastwood western Unforgiven , some people just up and die during torture due to a heart attack or other sudden stress-related condition.
I would expect that finding to mostly apply to torture in the name of obtaining ideologically significant information, though. It takes a long time to wear people down to the point where they’ll betray things or people they’re strongly committed to, especially if they’re committed enough to be doing something that’s interesting to the CIA. I wonder how much of that resistance translates to a situation in which all the torturers want is your wallet, though. I can imagine a lot of people being willing to die (or get closer to dying) to avoid giving up their comrades or strongly held beliefs. I can imagine far fewer people being willing to die to protect their Bitcoin.
What the CIA claimed is they had to do that to push them past the point at which they felt they could resist so Allah would forgive them for spilling their guts about their brothers in arms. A bitcoin wallet and you’ve got an hour or two to do it? No idea. Would you take an hour with a wrench for $9 million?
Would you take an hour with a wrench for $9 million?
If I knew I only had to last an hour and that the wrencher definitely wouldn’t kill me? Maybe (though I can’t say definitely). A bunch of guys who may or may not be willing to kill me and may or may not kill me unintentionally busting into my house and engaging in open-ended torture in order to get at $9 million that I apparently need so little that I can lock it up in an encrypted wallet seems like a pretty relevantly different situation, though.
That only really applies if the victim is keeping something from them that really means something to them like another human or an ideology.
I could see anyone giving up any money real fast to avoid losing fingers.
I could see anyone giving up any money real fast to avoid losing fingers.
Especially when it isn’t their money, it’s the company’s money.
This is similar to the reason why grapheneOS doesn’t have a silent “duress profile” to log into. If someone like this thinks they know what you have and you don’t, the last thing you want is a reason for them to believe you’re lying. There is a “nuke the phone” alternate password guys it’s open about the fact that you’re wiping the phone so there’s no ambiguity to the situation.
article on this:
Fake deliveries, then guns: How a ‘wrench attack’ crime ring chased crypto millions from S.F. to L.A.
https://archive.ph/ZRRMl | https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/crypto-wrench-attack-home-invasion-22088091.php
Well they would be able to have a multi-sig wallet where you need multiple devices to be present at once to get access to the funds. If you go to their house but you also need something from a bank deposit box in order to fire off a transaction then a lot of good the wrench is going to do you. You’d have to kidnap them, take them to the bank, and then they don’t ask for help. You’d need a hostage or something and that’s a mighty big escalation. Further, you can time gate your wallet as well, so if you intend to kidnap someone or take a hostage you’d need a hideout and a guard rotation. At which point you could probably do legitimate business or organized crime or something instead of deciphering this asshole’s big obfuscated system. And if they had a horocrux in an international bank then the idea is DoA because there simply must be an easier target. And at that point I lowkirkenually don’t want them to be able to do that even if they’re targeting crypto bros.
is “horocrux” a legit banking term that scaped fucking harry potter?
I know some people really use the term. It’s not an actual banking one to my knowledge. But when people think about their threat profile it’s a really easy way to imagine it
What if I threaten to destroy the device you’ve got on you and say that if you don’t give me half of your crypto, nobody gets anything.
You could have a 2 of 3 multi-sig as well kek
I would simply sell my bitcoin and retire.
