Bitcoin Forum

Bomb Threats Demanding Bitcoin Force Evacuations Across Russia

Someone has been sending bomb threats across Russia, demanding $870,000 worth of bitcoin supposedly stolen from the defunct cryptocurrency exchange WEX.

Source: Coindesk (https://www.coindesk.com/bomb-threats-demanding-bitcoin-force-evacuations-across-russia)

The bomb threats are quite successful in inconveniencing 750,000 people but a failed one in getting the results that they wanted: Bitcoin.  This story can be considered a little bit funny but is a demonstration of the problems with the Russian government (or some people thereof). Looking at the story of WEX, I am convinced that some government personalities were really involved and these people are just pretending that nothing happened because they are at the very control of power so they feel that they are untouchable at all times. A sad story, indeed!

Well there could be some powerful people in Russia behind WEX lost funds and I doubt that they will gave in to those demands. I know it is scary when bomb threats are being used by criminals here and forcing people to evacuate. And I'm sure police authorities or who ever agencies are looking at this threat, sooner or later they're going to catch up. But regarding those powerful entities behind WEX? I doubt it, as long as they're in control those money are not going to be recovered.

It's hard to take anything serious when it involves Russia or WEX, especially in this case.

The annoying thing about these bomb threats is that it motivates others to do the same in an attempt to get whoever they threaten to send them Bitcoin. It's like a domino effect. It's kinda similar to what happened with youtube's censorship recently, where some youtubers who's channels weren't striked were threatened by random accounts demanding Bitcoin or else they would get that channel striked as well.

The article date is from 24 december btw.

People will eventually just be laughing off whenever there can be another bomb threats soon and this tactic can be losing its effectiveness. This incident is actually showing us that even in the country of Russia under a strict and almost dictatorial regime of Putin, there are still people who can pull off something like this which of course the government is not taking in lightly. Hopefully, there will never be the same threats as this can be putting a lot of disruption to the people. 

They will get a lot of this threats soon especially when they go ahead with their plan on the power of authorities on confiscating cryptocurrencies to their citizens espevially the ones linked to crime. They must know that they are facing a hard enemy here and I would think twice before doing any kind of moves similar to what they did with the funds from WEX, they can't really be too careless now especially when threats like this will be real.

Who knows what extortion a future of cryptoness and the shameful lack of security applied to the interconnected world will create? I'd say we were just getting warmed up.

When your car, vibrator, pacemaker, toothbrush, proctologist, womb, cat and more all have wifi with gaping holes in them and we have law enforcement that has little to no interest in pursuing any online crime scum will be in paradise.

lol, someone sent them 0.00006666 BTC. that's a nice little FU to the hoaxers:

when btc-e went down in 2017, and when bitfinex got hacked in 2016, i lost a lot of bitcoins. did i go around making bomb threats? no, i stopped storing my coins on exchanges. ::)

The skeptical me thinks that this might be another move to create negative news for bitcoin. However, I reckon that this might also be the beginning of a time when some criminal syndicates use the cryptospace not only for drugs, they might begin using it more for kidnap for ransom and extortion.

Does anyone know why they asked for payments in BTC? ??? I mean that using a privacy coin like Monero would be appropriate, especially since the threat of bombing is considered a criminal crime more than theft.
I did not understand the link with WEX, but it seems that no one took the warning seriously because they did not make profits.

Regardless of the incident, but the recurrence of such cases will negatively affect the reputation of Bitcoin.

It makes me curious why they demand an amount of Bitcoin that is coming from the defunct cryptocurrency exchange WEX. Why do these attention-seeking addicts specify the Bitcoin that should be sent to them?

Why do most dark markets still run on BTC when many of them have a Monero option? Because people are lazy and it's more convenient despite the constant risk of it coming back to bite them.

i'm assuming the ones making bomb threats were victims of WEX's collapse. the demands were aimed at the FSB conspirators who allegedly robbed WEX's admin of its wallets, which was possibly done at the behest of the russian state. the story is quite fascinating: https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-50420738

perhaps they were hoping to be repaid from those same funds. WEX only listed XMR near the very end, after withdrawals for BTC, ETH, etc were frozen and trading activity had died. i'm guessing they had very little XMR in their coffers. plus, XMR is terribly illiquid anyway. it's easy to sell $1 million worth of BTC in russia OTC......XMR, probably not.

it is not the first threat , around 2 months ago there was another similar demand :
https://beincrypto.com/terrorists-demand-bitcoin-from-russian-railways-after-bombing-threats/
once things like that get on the news , it starts to spread like wildfire :(
this could be literally anyone  demanding coins , I hear there was a big counter terrorist OP in Russia
Vladimir Putin has even called Trump and thanked him for information leading to the arrest of the alleged bombers
seems like despite all the controversy , the agencies are still cooperating combating terrorism

Its becoming common in Russia.  Or it could be the same person who has the motivation to seek Bitcoin because a bullrun is coming  :D


Now that you suggested XMR, the wanna be terrorist will soon demand XMR hoping he will be taken seriously once and for all. It would be the most devastating effect to this terrorist if someone just send another 0.00006666 XMR

My skeptical answer? The darknet vendors might be people from the drug enforcement agencies hehehe. 

In any case, the transition will be slow, however, I speculate anonymous coins will be the next sought after store of value.

Even if you're nefarious you're still more than likely looking for the path of least resistance. Soon enough you won't be able to move any privacy coin to any big arse exchange.

There's P2P of course but by that stage P2P buyers might be running your BTC through their taint checker app and telling you to bog off.

That is another instance of how the fiat system is taming the cryptospace. The delisting or the refusal to list of anonymous coins by exchanges under the orders of the regulators.

Anonymous coins might cause the fiat system the greatest harm and we should support those that might cause the greatest harm.

Ehm. Isn't the main purpose of these coins to be traded back and forth anonymously? I would say it's much better to have centralized exchanges not mess around with them. It obviously hurts the liquidity, but in return you get a greater deal of privacy. Anyone buying such coins from a centralized exchange to finance or buy something the state doesn't want is a dumbo.

Also, the actual use of these coins is highly overrated when it comes to their privacy features. Not enough people care enough about what features they offer to actually be upset about exchanges removing them slowly but surely. I expected the use of these coins to pick up, but adoption wise they haven't gotten anywhere.

One funny thing about WEX is how Pavel Durov, the creator of Telegram, has lost 2,000 BTC to it by storing his coins there - https://forklog.com/smi-osnovatel-telegram-pavel-durov-hranil-bitkoiny-na-birzhe-wex/

The guy has been in tech industry for so many years, but apparently he didn't bother to do 20 minutes of research to know that you should keep your coins in your own wallet. Or maybe he's so rich that he forgot about those coins or didn't care.

That might be true only because most of the people who are participating in the cryptospace are only using cryptocoins as speculative investments. That might not be true anymore in the future when everyone begins using them as currency.