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Unfortunately, there has also been violence in the field of cryptocurrency. After all, cryptocurrency owners are owners of big money. And where there is big money – there will be swindlers and criminals.

So, on July 9, 2018, Bitcoin Core developer Jameson Lopp launched a repository (github.com/jlopp/physical-Bitcoin-attacks) in which he collected and documented cases of physical violence against Bitcoin owners from both criminal elements and law enforcement agencies. The resource is available on GitHub and currently holds more than 40 different incidents that took place since December 2014, when police special forces broke into Hel Finney’s house in Santa Barbara. He is a famous American programmer and one of the first Bitcoin users; he received the first Bitcoin transaction of 10 coins from the creator of the project Satoshi Nakamoto.

The list also included incidents that occurred throughout the world, including cases of extortion of cryptocurrency under the threat of death, theft from Bitcoin ATMs and theft of mining equipment.

The list includes the abduction of the leading analyst of the EXMO cryptocurrency exchange, Pavel Lerner in Kiev at the end of 2017, the robbery of the founder of the “Kryptach” YouTube channel Pavel Nyashin (Makushin), who unfortunately was found hanged, stealing $100,000 in Bitcoins from Russian blogger Maxim Lotsok on the island of Phuket in Thailand, as well as the theft of 300 BTC from one of the creators of cryptocurrency Prizm Yuri Mayorov in April in Moscow.

As Jameson Lopp (one of the most well-known developers of Bitcoin), whose home in North Carolina in October 2017 was nearly taken by assault by US special forces, notes, 23 of the listed incidents involved physical violence. And only in one case could the victim of the criminals defend himself successfully – this is about localbitcoins trader Ryan Rice from Miami, who they tried to rob during a deal to sell Bitcoins.

One of the last documented cases of attempted robbery was recorded on October 15, 2018 in Oslo, Norway when a 24-year-old man was murdered in his home after exchanging large sum of BTC.

In addition, on December 15, 2017, representatives of the main investigative department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) with two witnesses entered the apartment of the founder of ForkLog Anatoly Kaplan in Odessa to start the search. Formally, the basis for the search was the criminal proceedings against a group of persons from the United States and Ukraine, who, according to investigators, developed a criminal scheme to seize money from third-party payment cards. During the search, the SBU officers seized several devices with cryptocurrencies stored on them, a laptop and other personal belongings of Anatoly Kaplan. At the same time, one of the officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) attempted to withdraw Bitcoins to his wallet during the search. Also, the very next day, 305 ETHs were withdrawn from Anatoly’s Ethereum wallet. At the same time, the search took place at the ForkLog office in Odessa, and as a result, the company’s cash, all the equipment (about ten iMac devices) and a bottle of Kraken rum were confiscated. ¹⁸

I hope the criminals got what they deserved, and the Jameson Lopp repository will no longer be replenished.