# Co-founder of Ledger freed after kidnapping

Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-23/co-founder-of-french-crypto-startup-freed-after-kidnapping

## Comments

**macbudkowski.eth**: > "David Balland was taken from his home in the early hours of Tuesday and freed on Wednesday night after a police operation. The criminals demanded the payment of a substantial ransom in cryptocurrency, the prosecutor’s office said."

Sorry for the paywall, couldn't find any legit, non-paywall source that's not in French to report on that.

Heard rumors about it 2 days ago, and most people thought it's just FUD. Apparently it wasn't

**timdaub.eth**: Shit, one can only hope that this isn't mimetically spreading. Is anything known about whether money exchanged hands here? Because a bad outcome would be that he paid the ransom and so it becomes economically viable to do this

**macbudkowski.eth**: My friend who's a journalist at DL News and spoke with the French prosecutors says it's unclear whether the ransom was paid. (link to his article: https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/kidnapped-ledger-cofounder-free-after-paying-crypto-ransom/)

**timdaub.eth**: That to me is why I think there'll be more and more a tendency of loaded crypto people to become part of the state-mafia. 

I know it's a crazy sociological conspiracy theory, but that's also why calling for social clean-up in inner cities is now a more popular demand.
In a society where you have to rely on the safety of your home and the safety of your freedom and well-being the population doesn't want homeless roaming the street and it doesn't want shady looking may-be-criminals in their country anymore.

You'll see, this will be the effect of more wide spread self custody (sadly)