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Comment by suzzer99

21 hours ago

The median person does not have $10k sitting in a checking account that they can easily withdraw. My gut feeling is that the threat of kidnapping is a lot more serious in some countries. The US maybe not so much.

> The median person does not have $10k sitting in a checking account that they can easily withdraw.

That's true, finding someone with 10k is not as easy as picking a person at random, but it is as easy as driving to the right parking lot and picking a person at random.

  • Pulling $10k out of the global banking system by physical coercion in a way that isn't reversible and won't get you caught is hard problem, you might as well attempt to rob the bank instead. That's why most of the "successful" criminals in that space use social engineering and scamming where the victim is a unwitting participant rather than kidnapping someone.

    With crypto, no bank or other middleman involved, it's like stealing physical cash/gold/diamonds from someone, if you know they have it in their possession, so violence can be a lot more successful at coercing a change of possession.

Good point, perhaps the lower $ examples are about other countries where that may be a lot more than median transactional account holdings and maybe that concern is part of why folks were using crypto holdings.