If you’ve been paying attention to cryptocurrency news, you definitely should have noticed that almost every day there’s a news piece about a hack or some kind of cryptocurrency scam.
The weird part about it is that a huge majority of these cryptocurrency crimes happen in developed countries where crime rates are rather low while developing countries where crime rates are reaching a record peak tend to be much less reported.
Why is this happening especially with cryptocurrencies? And why developed nations in particular?
Developed nations are much more crypto heavy
Back when cryptocurrencies first became a thing, it was the average developer or tech expert in a developed nation that first head about it. Sure there were other, unaffiliated people that were heavily invested in cryptocurrencies, but in most cases, it was people in the IT field that were either trying to improve the blockchain or invest heavily in it because of future prospects.
Because of this, thousands of developers quickly became rich almost overnight in 2017 and decided to leave their jobs and start investing in other industries. Thanks to their activity many of them became quite well known in their communities. But it’s never a good idea to broadcast one’s wealth for all to see unless the person has what it takes to protect both that wealth and themselves.
That was the case recently in Norway, which was reported by a local gaming news outlet, Сasinopånett news, and various other cryptocurrency news websites.
A Norwegian crypto millionaire was assaulted in his own house with a handgun, which he narrowly escaped by jumping out of his own balcony.
The reason he was so blatantly targeted, was because of his notoriety in the Norwegian community and fame for having made a fortune with the blockchain technology.
If you want to know more you can read the source of this story.
What about the hacks?
In terms of hacks as well, developed nations tend to have a lot more cryptocurrency exchanges registered than developing countries. This has been the case with South Korea, which experiences a hack attack on a crypto exchange nearly every day.
Because of this, the local population has been scared into oblivion and tend to not park their funds on local exchanges. This has caused a severe lack of trading volume, thus forcing several exchanges to shut down with many more on the way.
Hacking may not be a direct cause of shutdowns, but it contributes to the majority of reasons.
Liquidity in developed nations is better
Finally, we come to a point where we need to talk about liquidity. Developed nations tend to have much more Bitcoin ATMs, cryptocurrency exchanges, crypto companies and overall enterprises that target the blockchain technology.
This allows for a much more controlled method of liquidating one’s assets without getting others involved in the process too much. This means that a criminal that has stolen cryptocurrencies both through violence or peaceful measures, has a lot more options to cash out these funds and never be seen again.
The only issue that these criminals will have to face at one point or another is the use of these funds in the first place.
Taking the money outside of the country or crediting it to a traditional online platform is going to warrant some kind of investigation, which is why most people tend to just deposit the funds little by little on their existing accounts on banks, digital wallets and etc.
Can these methods be combatted?
The security aspect of the blockchain technology is being constantly developed, meaning that hack attacks, phishing and etc are becoming much harder to pull off by the criminals.
If we give it around a year or so, it’s likely that every crypto exchange will turn into a brick wall that hackers will have to face while trying to access their databases.
However, when it comes to physical robbery, similar to what happened in Norway. It’s always best to keep the wealth you’ve accumulated to yourself and enjoy it in peace an quiet. At least that’s the lesson we learn from the Norwegian Bitcoin millionaire.