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This is from Nick Neuman at Casa. The general concept is spot on: if it was known that most Bitcoiners used multisigs, wrench attacks would probably be less common.
However, I'm not sure his argument is the best. Neuman argues that one of the main reasons home burglaries have dramatically decreased from the 1990s is an increase in the prevalence of home alarm systems. While this may be true, I suspect another major reason is that fewer people keep piles of cash in their house, and most of the portable, high value items are becoming harder to sell. Feels like every pawn shop requires ID these days. Maybe I'm just not deep enough in the criminal world...
Wild chart though showing the increase in extortion attempts on crypto holders in general:
I recall @elvismercury writing about this a while ago.
I agree with your basic premise that it’s about expected value. The other dimension of that is raising the cost of attack, as in decriminalizing self defense. These will always be more common in France than Texas.
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This is one of the SN posts I'm proudest of. Glad you remember it.
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I was still so new to this space back then that a lot of those concerns weren't on my radar yet.
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A Mossberg in every coat closet!
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another major reason is that fewer people keep piles of cash in their house, and most of the portable, high value items are becoming harder to sell.
This is the real reason. Home security systems are not even close to being the real reason.
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17 sats \ 1 reply \ @nichro 7h
Ive thought of this defense vector before: educating the malintentioned criminals about multisig and other security schemes.
However, the world where it's common knowledge that almost everyone either uses multisig, or don't have easy access for other reasons (e.g. they just have ETFs), is a world much closer to hyperbitcoinization than now
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Great point. It's probably the case that a small percentage actually use multisig.
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