Ezra Marcus

And

and they threatened his life.

He was held over a balcony on the fifth floor of the townhouse.

I mean, basically he was just like, that the fear of violent retaliation was enough for him to see himself as a prisoner.

It comes down to this sort of absurd, you might say paradox, at the heart of crypto culture, which is like,

It was marketed as this liberatory technology so that you don't need to use a bank anymore.

You are the bank.

Your money is yours and it's like not tied to any kind of federal bureaucratic system with regulated banks and it's international and it's of your private code and only you own it.

And it's like, OK, great.

Like, do you know what banks have?

Vaults.

Do you know why?

Because people can't come and take stuff out of them.

So if you want to be the bank, you have to suddenly start hardening your life in all these ways that I think people didn't really realize in their first sort of glory days of crypto that like.

The security of my holdings is only as strong as my ability to withstand torture as far as giving up my password.

Because as soon as you give someone the password to your wallet, the money is just instantly gone and it's in someone else's wallet and good luck getting it back.

It's much easier to steal the $30 million of somebody whose $30 million is just essentially a password in their mind versus a bank account that you would need to break into a bank

security system to get a hold of.

And that's why they call these wrench attacks, because it's just this incredibly simple thing.

It's like, I'm showing up on your front door with a wrench, and I'm saying, give me your money now.