Hacker News Reader

Comment by AgentME | Hacker News Reader

One neat thing about multisig keys physically spread is that it's extremely more difficult to coerce someone to make a payment. If an attacker knows you have a ton of money locked up behind a key you have memorized, they can kidnap and torture you until you give them the key. If the money is locked behind multiple keys physically spread and you're known to be the paranoid sort to do that, then it becomes a lot more logistically challenging and may deter kidnappers: some of the locations could have physical security (ie. it's in a bank safe deposit box that the bank only allows the owner alone to physically access), there's more chances for the victim to get away, the attackers can't know ahead of time if the victim is leading them on a wild goose chase to incorrect locations, etc.

View on HN

This appeals to me in a way that's hard to articulate. It's the perfect combination of "this will never happen" and "well now, let's not be too hasty with our assumptions..."

It makes me think of XKCD 538 and its alt-text (https://xkcd.com/538/ -- "Actual actual reality: nobody cares about his secrets"). The part that alt-text didn't foresee was that cryptocurrency would become a thing and that many people would store tons of value in it.

I think anyone that got into Bitcoin early or has otherwise made it big in the cryptocurrency scene ought to seriously investigate setting up their funds in a way that they can't be quickly coerced into transferring it.

All this discussion of furiously encrypting bitcoin reminds me of another xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/916/

>some of the locations could have physical security (ie. it's in a bank safe deposit box that the bank only allows the owner alone to physically access)

This remind me of stories of people on localbitcoins doing exchange at a local bank because physical security is good for decentralised internet money.

There is a critical bug in this approach that the attacker may not be aware of the use of multisig keys beforehand and have a good incentive to kill the victim.

And how do you convince them you're really that paranoid? They'll torture you anyway to find out if you're telling the truth.

It can also mean that they torture you and you would really like it to end, but unfortunately you don't have that option.

"I can weather torture just fine" sounds like exactly the thing you would say until you experience it.

That chain of thought of wanting to make it easy to irreversibly liquidate your assets fast for a kidnapper leads to strange places.

Make sure to be rich. If you don't own cryptocurrency, make sure to buy some and convert most of your wealth to it so you can irreversibly send most of your wealth away to give in to an attacker. Make sure the keys to spend it all immediately are physically present with you and easy to access when you're kidnapped. Hope the kidnappers don't hold out for more.

If an individual is known to have done that, or the above steps are commonly followed, then kidnapping-for-ransom becomes a more common and more rational thing to do by desperate people. Doing the opposite, having people plan ahead to make it harder to please a kidnapper, makes the kidnapping-for-ransom attack less common and less rational to do. My argument is more about making it not happen to begin than making a kidnapping go pleasantly for the victim.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com