2025 Crypto Violence Retrospective: 65 Physical Assaults, 4 Fatal Incidents

By: blockbeats|2026/01/05 14:00:01

Original Article Title: In Defense of Exponentials

Original Article Author: Haseeb Qureshi, Dragonfly General Partner

Original Article Translation: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

Editor's Note: Do you remember the recent news about the Russian cryptocurrency billionaire Roman Novak and his wife Anna being found dismembered and buried on a beach in Dubai? In 2025, another dark side of the cryptocurrency industry is the increasing frequency of violent attacks against holders, especially the wealthy.

As a highly recognizable figure in the industry, Haseeb Qureshi, the bald-headed General Partner of Dragonfly, has today conducted a data analysis of violent incidents in the cryptocurrency field in recent years and explained that the reason for writing this article is because he is "increasingly scared." The data shows that in 2025, there were a total of 65 violent incidents in the industry, including 4 major fatal cases. Not only is the number of attack incidents rapidly increasing, but the attacks themselves are becoming more violent. Therefore, at the end of the article, Haseeb thoughtfully includes some personal safety recommendations.

Below is Haseeb's full article, translated by Odaily Planet Daily.

Are violent attacks against cryptocurrency holders on the rise?

Jameson Lopp has been quietly maintaining a database known as "wrench attacks," which are violent attacks against cryptocurrency holders aimed at coercing them to hand over their crypto assets. This is currently our closest source of "real-world benchmark data" to assess whether holding crypto assets is becoming more dangerous over time.

I have recently become increasingly afraid of such attacks, so I took Lopp's dataset and used a somewhat Vibe Coding method to visualize some of it to see what's really going on. Here are my findings.

2025 Crypto Violence Retrospective: 65 Physical Assaults, 4 Fatal Incidents

You are not mistaken—the number of attack incidents is indeed increasing over time (with 65 incidents in 2025). Furthermore, the attacks themselves are becoming more violent.

I had Claude categorize each attack into 5 levels, with the specific classification scheme as follows:

· Minor (3 incidents in 2025): Theft without physical confrontation, attempted theft, ATM/device theft.

· Moderate (9 incidents in 2025): Robbery with some level of violence or assault, drugging, extortion;

· Severe (38 incidents in 2025): Armed robbery, kidnapping, home invasion with firearms or weapons;

· Extremely Severe (11 incidents in 2025): Kidnapping involving torture, dismemberment, severe beating, gunshot wounds;

· Fatal (4 incidents in 2025): Victim fatality.

From the results, it can be seen that on average, the level of violence per single attack is continuously increasing.

Geographically, Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific region saw the highest increase in violent incidents. North America is currently still relatively the safest region, but even in North America, there has been an upward trend in absolute numbers.

So, what is causing the rise in violent incidents?

One of the most straightforward explanations is to link the frequency of violent incidents to the total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency market. In simple terms—higher prices, more crime.

Take a look at the chart results: the white line represents the total market cap of cryptocurrency; the colored area represents the number of violent incidents.

Conducting a simple regression analysis, the provided R² result is 0.45, meaning that 45% of the variation in violent incidents can be explained solely by the price itself. In other words, as we mentioned earlier, when prices rise, violent incidents increase—I have also run regression analyses on other variables, but none are as convincing as total market cap.

So, is it that simple? Does this already prove that holding cryptocurrency will pose an increasing personal danger?

We can perform another "stress test" to see if there are other hypotheses that could explain why the number of violent incidents is on the rise?

One possible explanation is that the increase in cryptocurrency prices inherently means more people hold cryptocurrency assets. In other words, the increase in criminal events may simply be because the "population base" has increased, and the actual risk of violence faced by each individual may not have truly risen.

Let's conduct a rationality check on this. Since accurately measuring the total number of cryptocurrency users is difficult, I chose two alternative indicators:

· The first is Coinbase's monthly active users, not cumulative registered users, as we want to exclude those who have already churned and no longer hold coins;

· The second method is more rudimentary, analyzing the number of violent incidents per unit market cap to derive an approximate measure of the "likelihood of theft per dollar."

Once you standardize the above data, you will see completely different conclusions: the blue line represents the number of violent incidents per Coinbase user; the green line represents the number of violent incidents per dollar of wealth

This data set suggests that 2015 and 2018 were actually the most dangerous periods to hold crypto. Yes, even though the number of attack incidents was much lower at that time, the number of cryptocurrency holders was also much, much lower.

From 2015 to 2025, Coinbase's monthly active users grew from 2 million to 120 million, a whopping 60x increase, but violent incidents did not increase proportionally.

Certainly, in recent years, the number of violent incidents per user has indeed increased, but the increase has been relatively modest, roughly equivalent to the 2021 violence levels and significantly lower than pre-2019 levels. Meanwhile, the rate of violent incidents per dollar of wealth has remained nearly unchanged.

We must also consider the alternative hypothesis of "news reporting bias"—whether incidents are just more likely to be reported—but this is beyond the scope of this analysis.

Overall, the number of violent incidents is indeed increasing, and the attack methods are becoming more violent. However, this can be partially attributed to the "population effect," meaning there are now more cryptocurrency holders, so the individual risk is not increasing as dramatically as it may seem.

But ultimately, this is not just an academic discussion. This is a truly serious, real-world issue.

If you are part of a high-risk group, there are actually many ways to improve your personal security. Here are some standard offline security suggestions:

· Try to live in a secure city, preferably in a residence with 24/7 security;

· Avoid wearing cryptocurrency-related clothing or implying that you hold cryptocurrency in public;

· Use a service like DeleteMe to remove your personal information from data brokers;

· Get a PO Box and have all commercial mail sent there to prevent your address from being widely circulated;

· Set up a hot wallet with a "giveaway" amount of money that is entirely separate from your actual cold storage assets;

· Diversify your funds: use multiple services, platforms, and devices to store your assets so that you don't lose everything at once in the worst-case scenario;

· Unless necessary, avoid publicly broadcasting your specific location in real-time, especially during cryptocurrency conferences;

· If you are truly part of a high-risk group or are about to visit a high-risk area, consider hiring private security – in some areas, this can be much more useful than you think.

2026 has arrived, and the year-end is approaching, with a long holiday ahead. Please be sure to stay safe.

Original Article Link

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Before using Musk's "Western WeChat" X Chat, you need to understand these three questions

The X Chat will be available for download on the App Store this Friday. The media has already covered the feature list, including self-destructing messages, screenshot prevention, 481-person group chats, Grok integration, and registration without a phone number, positioning it as the "Western WeChat." However, there are three questions that have hardly been addressed in any reports.

There is a sentence on X's official help page that is still hanging there: "If malicious insiders or X itself cause encrypted conversations to be exposed through legal processes, both the sender and receiver will be completely unaware."

Question One: Is this encryption the same as Signal's encryption?

No. The difference lies in where the keys are stored.

In Signal's end-to-end encryption, the keys never leave your device. X, the court, or any external party does not hold your keys. Signal's servers have nothing to decrypt your messages; even if they were subpoenaed, they could only provide registration timestamps and last connection times, as evidenced by past subpoena records.

X Chat uses the Juicebox protocol. This solution divides the key into three parts, each stored on three servers operated by X. When recovering the key with a PIN code, the system retrieves these three shards from X's servers and recombines them. No matter how complex the PIN code is, X is the actual custodian of the key, not the user.

This is the technical background of the "help page sentence": because the key is on X's servers, X has the ability to respond to legal processes without the user's knowledge. Signal does not have this capability, not because of policy, but because it simply does not have the key.

The following illustration compares the security mechanisms of Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, and X Chat along six dimensions. X Chat is the only one of the four where the platform holds the key and the only one without Forward Secrecy.

The significance of Forward Secrecy is that even if a key is compromised at a certain point in time, historical messages cannot be decrypted because each message has a unique key. Signal's Double Ratchet protocol automatically updates the key after each message, a mechanism lacking in X Chat.

After analyzing the X Chat architecture in June 2025, Johns Hopkins University cryptology professor Matthew Green commented, "If we judge XChat as an end-to-end encryption scheme, this seems like a pretty game-over type of vulnerability." He later added, "I would not trust this any more than I trust current unencrypted DMs."

From a September 2025 TechCrunch report to being live in April 2026, this architecture saw no changes.

In a February 9, 2026 tweet, Musk pledged to undergo rigorous security tests of X Chat before its launch on X Chat and to open source all the code.

As of the April 17 launch date, no independent third-party audit has been completed, there is no official code repository on GitHub, the App Store's privacy label reveals X Chat collects five or more categories of data including location, contact info, and search history, directly contradicting the marketing claim of "No Ads, No Trackers."

Issue 2: Does Grok know what you're messaging in private?

Not continuous monitoring, but a clear access point.

For every message on X Chat, users can long-press and select "Ask Grok." When this button is clicked, the message is delivered to Grok in plaintext, transitioning from encrypted to unencrypted at this stage.

This design is not a vulnerability but a feature. However, X Chat's privacy policy does not state whether this plaintext data will be used for Grok's model training or if Grok will store this conversation content. By actively clicking "Ask Grok," users are voluntarily removing the encryption protection of that message.

There is also a structural issue: How quickly will this button shift from an "optional feature" to a "default habit"? The higher the quality of Grok's replies, the more frequently users will rely on it, leading to an increase in the proportion of messages flowing out of encryption protection. The actual encryption strength of X Chat, in the long run, depends not only on the design of the Juicebox protocol but also on the frequency of user clicks on "Ask Grok."

Issue 3: Why is there no Android version?

X Chat's initial release only supports iOS, with the Android version simply stating "coming soon" without a timeline.

In the global smartphone market, Android holds about 73%, while iOS holds about 27% (IDC/Statista, 2025). Of WhatsApp's 3.14 billion monthly active users, 73% are on Android (according to Demand Sage). In India, WhatsApp covers 854 million users, with over 95% Android penetration. In Brazil, there are 148 million users, with 81% on Android, and in Indonesia, there are 112 million users, with 87% on Android.

WhatsApp's dominance in the global communication market is built on Android. Signal, with a monthly active user base of around 85 million, also relies mainly on privacy-conscious users in Android-dominant countries.

X Chat circumvented this battlefield, with two possible interpretations. One is technical debt; X Chat is built with Rust, and achieving cross-platform support is not easy, so prioritizing iOS may be an engineering constraint. The other is a strategic choice; with iOS holding a market share of nearly 55% in the U.S., X's core user base being in the U.S., prioritizing iOS means focusing on their core user base rather than engaging in direct competition with Android-dominated emerging markets and WhatsApp.

These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, leading to the same result: X Chat's debut saw it willingly forfeit 73% of the global smartphone user base.

Elon Musk's "Super App"

This matter has been described by some: X Chat, along with X Money and Grok, forms a trifecta creating a closed-loop data system parallel to the existing infrastructure, similar in concept to the WeChat ecosystem. This assessment is not new, but with X Chat's launch, it's worth revisiting the schematic.

X Chat generates communication metadata, including information on who is talking to whom, for how long, and how frequently. This data flows into X's identity system. Part of the message content goes through the Ask Grok feature and enters Grok's processing chain. Financial transactions are handled by X Money: external public testing was completed in March, opening to the public in April, enabling fiat peer-to-peer transfers via Visa Direct. A senior Fireblocks executive confirmed plans for cryptocurrency payments to go live by the end of the year, holding money transmitter licenses in over 40 U.S. states currently.

Every WeChat feature operates within China's regulatory framework. Musk's system operates within Western regulatory frameworks, but he also serves as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This is not a WeChat replica; it is a reenactment of the same logic under different political conditions.

The difference is that WeChat has never explicitly claimed to be "end-to-end encrypted" on its main interface, whereas X Chat does. "End-to-end encryption" in user perception means that no one, not even the platform, can see your messages. X Chat's architectural design does not meet this user expectation, but it uses this term.

X Chat consolidates the three data lines of "who this person is, who they are talking to, and where their money comes from and goes to" in one company's hands.

The help page sentence has never been just technical instructions.