Officials say a cryptocurrency investor has been arrested and charged with kidnapping, assaulting and holding a man against his will for several weeks in an upscale Manhattan town house.
It's common enough that people know about it. I have some Bitcoin but I don't even know my keys, they can only be recovered at a secure, protected location
Banks will second guess their customers trying to transfer their entire account to an account not owned by them over the phone. It's kind of like extortion has existed for a long time and the existing monetary structure tries to make it hard rather than easy.
Large bank transfers are generally traceable and require identifying documentation for the receiving bank account. Sure, that can be falsified, but it’s often a lot of work; and transfers of this size will often have a hold and/or, fraud prevention intelligence involved to prevent malicious activity.
Sure, it’s not impossible that a bank transfer could have prevented this. But crypto exacerbates human greed by removing the safeguards, restrictions, and identification/legality placed around currency. Once the money is transferred it’s gone to a set of numbers. Yes, humans are at fault. Humans have been greedy since the first human was born. Technology that allows greedy humans to more easily take advantage of others should be looked at with a critical lens.
It’s the reason people don’t hack banks, they hack crypto exchanges, and most of the time scammers get people to send them crypto using the vast networks of ATMs all over the world rather than charging their credit card or using a bank transfer.