Sad News: Kidnappers now requesting bitcoin as ransom in Nigeria {Gov might ban}

[Bes19]

Bitcoin has been used in criminal acts since before coz criminals stays anonymous but i don't think it will have a big impact on bitcoin coz it already happened many times. It saddened me coz some people think that BITCOIN is a scam where in fact it's not. It's just that people used it as a front for their own benefit.

[Bitcoininvestment]

It's a pity that we cannot do anything about it. It's not bitcoin's fault at all. It's all in the human. How they will treat or use bitcoin for their own benefits. We all know that bitcoin is also place for illegal transactions. And that's also the reason why some are afraid and against bitcoin.

[pixie85]

Shouldn't this be positive news? Even halfwits from poor African countries who can't find a job and have to kidnap people to bring food to the table are using Bitcoin.

This goes against all those who say Bitcoin is only for tech geeks and an average person won't know how to use it or won't spend time to learn.

Have the same freaking idea once I saw the thread title.
I dont know what is wrong with me but something felt right out of it.

I mean like WOW. Kidnappers using bitcoin? That is some sick idea from sick people who just want the money.
I guess anything goes by now. They are really thinking about it as a currency.

It's not even about kidnappers, but kidnappers in Nigeria. Friggin Nigeria, the capital of poverty.

According to a report by the Brookings Institution, data from the World Poverty Clock show that Nigeria now has over 87 million people living in poverty.

A country where people live in straw huts and people know how to utilize Bitcoin. We've come a long way in adoption.

You can view this news into two perspectives:

1. Economic Perspective; and
2. General Welfare.

For the first perspective like what you have mentioned, a country that is as poor as Nigeria is utilizing bitcoin in their country. Their economic condition does not hamper their accessibility towards this opportunity of earning cryptocurrencies in their country. At first, I did not think that it may be possible for them to gain access but this gives hope in the future in using cryptocurrencies as the next generation of money.

For the second perspective, we cannot deny the fact that any crime is an unfortunate event. Although kidnapping results to a serious crime which illegally deprives the right of an individual, a life cannot be traded and be regarded as equal to money or property. If people are using bitcoin as their ransom, this may negatively impact the reputation of bitcoin further.

Good post. I agree.

What is wrong with you? How could use of Bitcoin for criminal purposes be a good news? Or just matters to you that Bitcoin is used, no matter for what
Even without such news Bitcoin still struggles with reputation of illegal activities currency that some people are still convinced in.

I'm just being objective. Crime is always going to be there and if Bitcoin ever reaches mass adoption it's going to be used for it even more. If you can't stop crime you can always be happy that they are choosing Bitcoin over USD which is used by crime lords all over the world.

[Reatim]

Is this the first time a kidnapping has taken place?

No it’s not

Didn't the kidnapping happen before the creation of Bitcoin?

No it’s not

Didn't the kidnappers get money before?

No it’s not


But this was the first time they asked for Bitcoin (atleast as what I’ve learned)

And with this they can get the ransom safely,anonymously and easy things that will provide more victims as these criminal can abused the advantage of being decentralized and anonymous

In fiat they can be tracked by currency serial numbers

In banking payments same as traceable,but in crypto?they are free

[bhabygrim]

And how could the people know that the kidnapper's would release their hostage?
They want to make the transaction much more easier for them so that they couldn't be tracked.
What if the ranson got paid and the kidnappers didn't give the hostage back?

[bryant.coleman]

Yeah, what happened to the mt gox stolen coins? Have they tracked the culprits?
Have they tracked the bitstamp hackers? Have they tracked the binance hackers?
Do you know how much they've recovered from the bitfinex hack? 23 BTC out of 100k.

I don't think there is any type of cases with less success rate in recovering funds than those related to cryptos.

The authorities have traced back the Mt Gox robbery to Alexander Vinnik, who is currently in a Greek prison. And as per reliable reports, his associates in Russia are trying to reach a deal with the authorities and their lawyer is claiming that they are ready to give up whatever amount they got from the hack (which may be upto BTC200,000).

The Binance and Bitfinex hacks occurred recently and once the hackers try to convert their bounty to fiat cash, the authorities will get their chance to arrest them and confiscate the stolen coins. The chances are low, but there have been success stories. And obviously, the victims need to wait for many years to get any of that stolen amount reimbursed to them.

[pinkpanther03]

Isn't Nigeria was located at the country of Africa? if this is true, this might be one of the reason why other government country are opposing cryptocurrency or bitcoin it is because of this cases, due to the kidnappers are anonymous. And since it is from Nigeria, meaning they are African people, were most of the African people now are not trustworthy, this will get affect 100% if there are some ico, ieo own by African people hard to support it, because of this incident happened now.

[stompix]

~

The authorities have traced back the Mt Gox robbery to Alexander Vinnik, who is currently in a Greek prison

Vinnik is accused of laundering, I'm asking you about tracing the coins and finding the culprits.

And as per reliable reports, his associates in Russia are trying to reach a deal with the authorities and their lawyer is claiming that they are ready to give up whatever amount they got from the hack (which may be upto BTC200,000).

Reliable sources?
Zookeepers allover the world are scared their penguins are dying of laughter after reading that news.
There are 830k coins in total missing from MtGox, 200k has been recovered and are under control of Kobayashi, some scammers claim they might recover another 200k, still that leaves 400k coins.

The Binance and Bitfinex hacks occurred recently and once the hackers try to convert their bounty to fiat cash, the authorities will get their chance to arrest them and confiscate the stolen coins. The chances are low, but there have been success stories. And obviously, the victims need to wait for many years to get any of that stolen amount reimbursed to them.

Yeah, recently, 3 years ago...But funny how you avoided Bitstamp, was that a bit too not so long ago?
What about the others? Bitcoin7, Cryptsy, Bitfloor, Bitmarket....for god's sake I could write names till Christmas
What about the first MtGox hack?

A country where people live in straw huts and people know how to utilize Bitcoin. We've come a long way in adoption.

Do you think they kidnap people living in huts asking for 25 satoshi ransoms?
The best zones of Lagos are more expensive than cities in Europe, houses there can easily go over 3mils$.

[Miklight88]

this aint problem to me regard bitcoin or cryptocurrency but thse that use it as an avenue to scam people of use as a ransom are the devil part ,even cash has been use in many ocasition and till now no trace , so am not border as the price specify in that chat is a lie but $15000 was the amount and that has nothing to do with bitcoin .

[LogitechMouse]

I will share my opinion from both sides since I see good and bad things regarding this.

Bad: This can affect the price of Bitcoin since it is being used in bad things but... Bitcoin is being used in the black market already and some of the terrorists are using it too. Its just they are not publicizing it unlike this situation??

Good: More buyers = higher price . Simple as that

[Theb]

Can't the authorities take advantage of this kinds of crimes already? I know that other countries are blacklisting addresses linked with illicit activities. The Nigerian authorities could really take advantage of this on flushing them out once they send the ransom because they will be able to track them easily. If they blacklisted the address they have sent the BTC into then they would just trapping them giving them the chance to recover the coins back. This has been done with fiat currencies creating marked money there is really no difference except the marked money is digital.

[Kyraishi]

I think you're going at this with a flawed mindset, which is making you reach the following conclusion. In my opinion, the following news isn't actually very impactful, unless you have the views of a bitcoin-hater and try and paint a picture where the kidnapping only occurred because BTC existed and that BTC is the fuel for all of this, even though it's just a payment method - make it seem like this was not possible without BTC, and that criminals only deal in BTC.

This is incorrect. Ask any criminal nowadays, they all prefer cash over BTC. BTC has a public ledger amost other things which makes the currency extremely difficult to use for any criminal transacting huge amounts.

You need to think of think as crypto as another alternative payment method, like skrill, PayPal, bank transfers. When you end up with the mindset that the dark-net is fueled by crypto (big surprise, fiat currencies are still the most used currency for dark-net transactions), you are starting the race with 1 leg.

I'm more interested in if the government choose to pursue this case and find the kidnappers, I definitely see the government using the case to set a precedent and try and prevent these activities from occurring again.

[bryant.coleman]

Reliable sources?
Zookeepers allover the world are scared their penguins are dying of laughter after reading that news.
There are 830k coins in total missing from MtGox, 200k has been recovered and are under control of Kobayashi, some scammers claim they might recover another 200k, still that leaves 400k coins.

The news I was referring to was published in Coindesk, and therefore I would consider it as reliable:

https://www.coindesk.com/2-billion-lost-in-mt-gox-bitcoin-hack-can-be-recovered-lawyer-claims

The Mt Gox hackers (as per my assumption) included individuals from all over the globe. A large part of them were supposedly from Russia. The law firm ZPL (Zheleznikov and Partners Legal) claims that they know the identities of the Russian nationals, who in total received somewhere around BTC170,000 to BTC200,000 of the stolen coins. They are ready to give this data to the authorities in return for a commision of 50% to 75% of the recovered amount (to be payable only after the recovery is made).

Now don't think that the remaining coins can't be recovered. There were rumors after the robbery that most of the hackers were from the former USSR. So I would guess the remaining coins were pocketed by individuals from countries such as Ukraine and Estonia. Once the first set of individuals are identified and interrogated, then more coins can be recovered.

[Oasisman]

Bitcoin has been used in criminal acts since before coz criminals stays anonymous but i don't think it will have a big impact on bitcoin coz it already happened many times. It saddened me coz some people think that BITCOIN is a scam where in fact it's not. It's just that people used it as a front for their own benefit.

from that we realize that bitcoin is very helpful for crime so that the criminal remains anonymous. Sad, because we cannot stop these criminal activities in bitcoin world

Nope, nothing can stop criminals as long as there is money involved. Cases like this exist even before Bitcoin was created. Lucky, they had found a hole to take advantage of from the technology's anonymous transactions feature. Everyone knew that this will probably happen. Least that will happen is to ban Bitcoin from the countries that records a crypto related criminal activities, or completely regulate Bitcoin.

[stompix]

The news I was referring to was published in Coindesk, and therefore I would consider it as reliable:

Really fucked up times we're living right now, a quasi blog like website with independent bloggers and freelancer copying articles from other media and making them more clickbaitish has become a reliable source of information.

They are ready to give this data to the authorities in return for a commision of 50% to 75% of the recovered amount (to be payable only after the recovery is made).

Lols, you realize what you're saying here?  
Even if this is Russia, there is no place on this damn earth where a company can come and ask the authorities for a 50% commission to reveal data about a criminal case. If they even propose that for real they would be arrested themselves for this, and if there would be a real inquiry into this case in Russia and them refuse to release the data they claim to have they would end up in prison, in some European countries this can fall into preventing the course of justice and it comes with up to 20 years special treatment  .

Bottom line...
NOTHING was solved.
NO culprit was found!

Which again, goes against your whole tracing coins theory which has been proven unsuccessful in almost all hack cases.

[coolcoinz]

Nigerian princes are being kidnapped! The world is coming to an end.
I don't believe this will cause a ban, but you can never be sure what the politicians will come up with. The case of politicians laundering money with bitcoin in India comes to mind. It actually could end this way in Nigeria, but if they think this will stop the kidnappings they are wrong.

[Swingle]

If Bitcoin is banned in Nigeria all because kidnappers now requesting it as a means of ransom it might be a loss to Nigerians. This isn't the first time Bitcoin is been requested as payment for ransom nor Nigeria the first ever country this will or had happened to. Nigerian government need to solidify their security feat and give confidence to her citizens. The rate at which people are been kidnapped globaly us very alarming.

[Mike Mayor]

Wow if those kidnappers got 120k in 2016 they must have crap load worth now. This is not the first time this happened. When social media first came out did we ban it because someone was kidnapped? Bad things are on the internet in some places so does it mean we must end the internet? It is not the subject matter that is the problem it is what you do with it that is the problem.

[imstillthebest]

If Bitcoin is banned in Nigeria all because kidnappers now requesting it as a means of ransom it might be a loss to Nigerians.

not only thier loss but also ours  . we can also feel the impact if certain countries like nigeria have  sucesfully ban bitcoin  .

This isn't the first time Bitcoin is been requested as payment for ransom nor Nigeria the first ever country this will or had happened to.

yeah it isnt  . there are many negative news before on most countries and bitcoin were always on the subject  . that includes most common crimes like hacking , scamming and some are kidnapping  . btc's repuation are affected by these bad news but good thing that positive news also appears .

Nigerian government need to solidify their security feat and give confidence to her citizens. The rate at which people are been kidnapped globaly us very alarming.

you said it right . kidnapping is also present on other countries not just on nigeria , thats why thier government cant totally stop it but they can still do something to lessen it like deploying more security and cctv's on most places   .

[GMoore87]

There is no point in blaming Bitcoins for this. If it was not Bitcoins, they would be asking for fiat