From the earliest days of technopolitics, the role of technology in resisting authoritarianism was unclear.
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Encryption isn't proof against rubber hoses, but it *is* effective against many other forms of state repression, and it can provide a *technical* edge for those engaged in a *political* struggle.
Another faction - the faction most associated with bitcoin and subsequent cryptocurrency projects - rejects the role of the state altogether, and seeks to replace states (and state-regulated institutions like courts and banks) with mathematics.
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Rather than asking courts to interpret contracts, we can put our trust in self-executing "smart contracts," and rather than asking banks to safeguard our financial integrity, we can use cryptographic software to ensure that money only moves when the person it belongs to tells it to.
This has many problems. Smart contracts are slow, expensive, and unreliable.
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Rather than asking courts to interpret contracts, we can put our trust in self-executing "smart contracts," and rather than asking banks to safeguard our financial integrity, we can use cryptographic software to ensure that money only moves when the person it belongs to tells it to.
This has many problems. Smart contracts are slow, expensive, and unreliable.
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The number of people who understand contracts is small, the number of people who understand the software that embodies smart contracts is likewise small, and the Venn intersection of the two is more of a sphincter. What's more, there is irreducible ambiguity in all but the simplest of contracts, which means that even a "self-executing" contract ends up relying on a human adjudicator (an "oracle") who can be bribed or intimidated into cheating:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/14/externalities/#dshr
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The number of people who understand contracts is small, the number of people who understand the software that embodies smart contracts is likewise small, and the Venn intersection of the two is more of a sphincter. What's more, there is irreducible ambiguity in all but the simplest of contracts, which means that even a "self-executing" contract ends up relying on a human adjudicator (an "oracle") who can be bribed or intimidated into cheating:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/14/externalities/#dshr
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And when it comes to transactions, crypto proves to be unwieldy, expensive and complex, so that nearly all crypto users end up directing an intermediary (like Coinbase) to hold and move their cryptographic assets for them.
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And when it comes to transactions, crypto proves to be unwieldy, expensive and complex, so that nearly all crypto users end up directing an intermediary (like Coinbase) to hold and move their cryptographic assets for them.
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The upshot: cryptocurrency mostly replaces banks - imperfect, but heavily regulated and insured - with unregulated platforms with murky ownership and often defective procedures, who may or may not be insured (or even locatable) in the event of a collapse or a breach. Consequently, cryptocurrency has become a scam magnet of unprecedented and unstoppable power, and hardly a day goes by without people being ripped off in the most ghastly ways imaginable:
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/
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The upshot: cryptocurrency mostly replaces banks - imperfect, but heavily regulated and insured - with unregulated platforms with murky ownership and often defective procedures, who may or may not be insured (or even locatable) in the event of a collapse or a breach. Consequently, cryptocurrency has become a scam magnet of unprecedented and unstoppable power, and hardly a day goes by without people being ripped off in the most ghastly ways imaginable:
https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/
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For bitcoin maxis and other anti-state cypherpunks, this is just a skill issue. Anyone who doesn't understand how to manage their own keys and turns to a platform to hold and move their crypto is getting what they deserve. As the maxim goes, "Not your keys, not your wallet," which is cypherpunkspeak for "caveat emptor."
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For bitcoin maxis and other anti-state cypherpunks, this is just a skill issue. Anyone who doesn't understand how to manage their own keys and turns to a platform to hold and move their crypto is getting what they deserve. As the maxim goes, "Not your keys, not your wallet," which is cypherpunkspeak for "caveat emptor."
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That's where the wrench attacks come in. Because if you are in possession of keys that can be used to irreversibly and instantaneously steal large sums of money and move it to jurisdictions where the perpetrators are beyond any legal or physical recourse (e.g. North Korea), then there is a massive incentive for your adversaries to kidnap you and hit you with a wrench or a rubber hose.
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That's where the wrench attacks come in. Because if you are in possession of keys that can be used to irreversibly and instantaneously steal large sums of money and move it to jurisdictions where the perpetrators are beyond any legal or physical recourse (e.g. North Korea), then there is a massive incentive for your adversaries to kidnap you and hit you with a wrench or a rubber hose.
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That's precisely what's going on. People with substantial cryptocurrency holdings face grave personal danger, and the physical attacks on their person grow bolder, more violent, and more sadistic by the day:
https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks/blob/master/README.md
As crypto critic David Rosenthal writes, this problem is even worse than it seems at first blush:
https://blog.dshr.org/2026/05/wrench-attacks.html
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That's precisely what's going on. People with substantial cryptocurrency holdings face grave personal danger, and the physical attacks on their person grow bolder, more violent, and more sadistic by the day:
https://github.com/jlopp/physical-bitcoin-attacks/blob/master/README.md
As crypto critic David Rosenthal writes, this problem is even worse than it seems at first blush:
https://blog.dshr.org/2026/05/wrench-attacks.html
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For one thing, cryptocurrencies depend on "public ledgers" that indelibly, publicly record every transaction in the network. Cryptocurrency is nothing without these ledgers, and they *have* to be immutable and public to work. This is very bad news for anyone who relies on anonymity as their defense against physical attacks.
That's because "reidentification attacks" (where an anonymous person in a dataset is positively identified) get easier to perform over time.
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For one thing, cryptocurrencies depend on "public ledgers" that indelibly, publicly record every transaction in the network. Cryptocurrency is nothing without these ledgers, and they *have* to be immutable and public to work. This is very bad news for anyone who relies on anonymity as their defense against physical attacks.
That's because "reidentification attacks" (where an anonymous person in a dataset is positively identified) get easier to perform over time.
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You might be represented in a database of hospital prescribing activities by a random number, and that number might be hard to associate with your real identity...at first. But with every subsequent release of data - whether in the form of an anonymized data-set or a breach - it gets easier to cross-reference the facts associated with your record with other facts from other records, such that a detailed, identifying picture of you emerges one fact at a time.
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You might be represented in a database of hospital prescribing activities by a random number, and that number might be hard to associate with your real identity...at first. But with every subsequent release of data - whether in the form of an anonymized data-set or a breach - it gets easier to cross-reference the facts associated with your record with other facts from other records, such that a detailed, identifying picture of you emerges one fact at a time.
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For example, if the taxi company you use suffers a breach that reveals journeys associated with every doctor's appointment at the hospital, now an attacker can pick out the home or work address of the single person who visited the hospital just before you received your prescription. The longer an "anonymized" data-set sits around in public view, the easier it gets to de-anonymize it:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3
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For example, if the taxi company you use suffers a breach that reveals journeys associated with every doctor's appointment at the hospital, now an attacker can pick out the home or work address of the single person who visited the hospital just before you received your prescription. The longer an "anonymized" data-set sits around in public view, the easier it gets to de-anonymize it:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10933-3
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Combine the fact that permanent ledgers make it progressively easier to identify people whom you can torture into revealing their crypto keys with the irreversible, instantaneous nature of crypto transfers and you get some very juicy targets indeed. "Not your keys, not your wallet" means it's "not anyone else's problem" when you get robbed. You can't ask the bank to interdict or reverse the transaction.
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Combine the fact that permanent ledgers make it progressively easier to identify people whom you can torture into revealing their crypto keys with the irreversible, instantaneous nature of crypto transfers and you get some very juicy targets indeed. "Not your keys, not your wallet" means it's "not anyone else's problem" when you get robbed. You can't ask the bank to interdict or reverse the transaction.
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Rosenthal provides a litany of the escalating security measures crypto holders are turning to as this problem goes progressively more dangerous and terrifying. There's the guy who splits his keys up in four physical vaults at four separate locations, whose management is instructed to make him wait a minimum of seven days when he asks to retrieve them. Despite all this, he keeps his identity secret:
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Rosenthal provides a litany of the escalating security measures crypto holders are turning to as this problem goes progressively more dangerous and terrifying. There's the guy who splits his keys up in four physical vaults at four separate locations, whose management is instructed to make him wait a minimum of seven days when he asks to retrieve them. Despite all this, he keeps his identity secret:
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Rosenthal quotes Nicholas Weaver, who asks what kind of "internet of money" bitcoin can be if it can't be safely stored on a computer connected to the actual internet:
https://doi.org/10.1145/3208095
But an equally valid question is, what kind of escape from tyranny is it that requires you to hide your identity at all times lest you be snatched off the street and brutally tortured?
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Rosenthal quotes Nicholas Weaver, who asks what kind of "internet of money" bitcoin can be if it can't be safely stored on a computer connected to the actual internet:
https://doi.org/10.1145/3208095
But an equally valid question is, what kind of escape from tyranny is it that requires you to hide your identity at all times lest you be snatched off the street and brutally tortured?
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What kind of "liberty" requires you to spend $860,000 armoring your two top execs' personal vehicles to protect them from gunfire and light artillery?
https://www.ft.com/content/71d7486d-89b5-48ac-8f94-857578c0a03b
It costs $6.2m/year to protect Coinbase's CEO - "more than the combined amount that JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nvidia Corp. spent on their respective CEOs":
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What kind of "liberty" requires you to spend $860,000 armoring your two top execs' personal vehicles to protect them from gunfire and light artillery?
https://www.ft.com/content/71d7486d-89b5-48ac-8f94-857578c0a03b
It costs $6.2m/year to protect Coinbase's CEO - "more than the combined amount that JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Nvidia Corp. spent on their respective CEOs":
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Crypto true believers exhort one another to "HODL" (hold on for dear life). Selling your crypto during downturns is considered a moral failing. But now, crypto holders - especially those who manage their own keys - are *literally* holding on for dear life, as they are hunted by crime syndicates and state actors alike.
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Crypto true believers exhort one another to "HODL" (hold on for dear life). Selling your crypto during downturns is considered a moral failing. But now, crypto holders - especially those who manage their own keys - are *literally* holding on for dear life, as they are hunted by crime syndicates and state actors alike.
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It's a good reminder of how badly crypto has failed on its own terms, delivering its biggest users into an existence of fear and physical peril that rivals the plight of even the most hunted dissidents in the most repressive societies.
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It's a good reminder of how badly crypto has failed on its own terms, delivering its biggest users into an existence of fear and physical peril that rivals the plight of even the most hunted dissidents in the most repressive societies.
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Worse: as cryptocurrency lobbyists have fused crypto with the world's largest, most corrupt governments (especially the Trump regime), crypto now has the exposure to state coercion that made banks so unsuitable, but without the (inconstant, insufficient) protections offered by traditional banking.
And that's before we talk about the energy consumption problems, the scams enabled by crypto, and the rampant human trafficking that those scams necessitate:
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Worse: as cryptocurrency lobbyists have fused crypto with the world's largest, most corrupt governments (especially the Trump regime), crypto now has the exposure to state coercion that made banks so unsuitable, but without the (inconstant, insufficient) protections offered by traditional banking.
And that's before we talk about the energy consumption problems, the scams enabled by crypto, and the rampant human trafficking that those scams necessitate:
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People in my technopolitical faction have a saying of our own: "'Crypto' means *cryptography*." Cryptography plays a hugely important role in protecting people from crime and state repression. It is no substitute for the rule of law and democracy, but it remains a key tool for securing and defending both:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/the-best-defense-against-rubber-hose-cryptanalysis/
Cryptocurrency, on the other hand? That's the worst of all worlds.
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People in my technopolitical faction have a saying of our own: "'Crypto' means *cryptography*." Cryptography plays a hugely important role in protecting people from crime and state repression. It is no substitute for the rule of law and democracy, but it remains a key tool for securing and defending both:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/the-best-defense-against-rubber-hose-cryptanalysis/
Cryptocurrency, on the other hand? That's the worst of all worlds.
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My next book is *The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI*, out next month. Pre-order it now, including as a DRM-free audiobook or ebook, at my Kickstarter, and help me continue to prove that DRM-free isn't just the *right* way to reach an audience, it's also the *best* way to reach them:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai
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