> "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 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 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/) 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) | |