In 2025, the robbers' methods changed – they no longer broke into your home or pried open safes, they just asked one question:

"Read the mnemonic out loud, slow down for a second and you will wait."

Last year, there were at least over 200 cases worldwide of violent coercion to surrender cryptocurrency assets. Southeast Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe are high-incidence areas, but ironically, places like Hong Kong, Dubai, and Singapore, which are touted as "wealth hubs in the crypto space," have become major disaster zones. The reason is simple: robbers know that in these places, any random wallet address could easily start at eight figures in dollars.

Here are a few real cases that have been made public:

**Palm Island, Dubai, July 2025**
A Russian mining boss was tied up for three whole days. The kidnappers forcibly pried open his fingerprint-unlocked phone and hardware wallet with pliers, eventually transferring away $280 million worth of BTC and USDT. Ransom? No need to discuss, the crypto assets themselves were the ransom they wanted.

**A luxury apartment in Central, Hong Kong, March 2025**
Four masked gunmen broke directly into a cryptocurrency KOL's home, pressing a gun to his head, forcing him to open his Ledger on the spot, and transferred away 32,000 ETH — worth about 140 million dollars at the time. As if that wasn't enough, the robbers also forced the victim to tweet: "My wallet has been stolen, please do not interact with the related addresses." A classic money laundering tactic.

**Bangkok, Thailand, October 2025**
Three Chinese investors were drugged at a nightclub. When they woke up, they were already in a villa in the suburbs, with their phones, computers, Ledger hardware wallets, and even their retinal scans (used to unlock Worldcoin devices) all taken away. The loss exceeded 4 million dollars.

Today's robbers don't need you to withdraw cash from an ATM or wait for you to transfer money to a bank account. As long as they have your mnemonic phrase or fingerprint unlock, they can empty your assets within minutes. Moreover, once this money is transferred, it is almost impossible to recover.

The dream of financial freedom in the crypto world is beautiful, but the premise is — you have to live to spend it.