The issue of physical safety for BTC or cryptocurrency hodlers has been debated many times on the forum, and following several kidnappings of crypto influencers' relatives in France (but these kidnappings obviously also occur in other countries), how can btc influencers ensure their safety and that of their loved ones?
How can they both have visibility AND ensure their safety?
Immediately you take up an important role that you understand put your security at risk and jeopardize your safety, you should not take your security for granted. As you make money from influencing, you need to also invest this money into your security because it is necessary. Invest in private security to follow you or specific family members who you think are at risk, can be one option and another option can be keeping private information very private that it is difficult to obtain by the public.
Private security does not seem very practical, even for someone with a decent amount of money. Having private security will also draw attention to the person, too.
By not revealing their own identity and try to as private as possible.
Let's get the definition of influencer.
someone who affects or changes the way that other people behave:
There are many influencers in this forum and they never reveal their identity, although theymos likely have their IP address. Still, I don't know who're them, their face and so on.
o_e_l_e_o is one example of Bitcoin influencer, he taught me many thing about decentralization and non custodial, he influence me to use non custodial wallet in order to support decentralization.
These influencers are paid handsomely by Theymos for staying active in the forum and bringing more important persons into the forum, too. Although Theymos would not want to make it open to the forum, who these members are. o_e_l_e_o might be one of them, another member I think, is an influencer in the forum, is JayJuanGee. His knowledge of Bitcoin is beyond comprehension. There could be more of them, but whatever, only Theymos knows, as you rightly said.
As far as I know, members are not paid by the forum, except those that say staff and/or moderator might be receiving some compensation, but not regular members like me.
I will concede that there likely is some power, credibility and influence that comes from being a longer-term member and/or even from being a merit source, yet a lot of the credibility comes from the contents of posts and/or even some interactions with other members that might motivate them to side with you and or help you - and I am not implying that there necessarily is any quid pro quo going on.. even though surely over the years any members might pay some other members for help or get paid for helping other members.. which sometimes those kinds of past payment or relationships might be disclosed, but they don't necessarily need to be disclosed. Of course, signature campaigns also have a pay component, and there were only about slightly more than two years between late 2015 and early 2018 that I participated in a few different signature campaigns. yet I found them to be more trouble than what they are worth.
Many of the longer term forum members have mostly attempted to stay anonymous, even though it seems some have regretfully disclosed more of their personal information than they liked and sometimes have sought name changes based on their giving away a lot of personal information (probably more than they should have had done).
Surely there are assumptions that longer term bitcoiners either have a lot of bitcoin or have a lot of money, and surely sometimes we even state some of our particulars that include that bitcoin has been good to us... And, so there also can be some reluctance to get into some of the details because sometimes details are used against members.. and sometimes, if we talk in terms of hypotheticals, there also can be some common threads that cause other members (or even people reading who are not members) to presume that we might have certain quantities of bitcoin based on some of the examples that we tend to like to give.
It can be difficult to help others without providing examples. I even have had friends in real life who make certain presumptions based on information that they know about me, so then sometimes some of us might even regret engaging in some good deeds because the information might end up getting out and then there may well be unrealistic presumptions that come from the information that is known, and yeah, some folks are more desperate than others in regards to how far they will want to try to go in order to be able to receive some bitcoin.. or even other types of easily transferable coins that any of us might hold.
We should be attempting to take precautions, and sometimes on the street when I might ask some business if they accept bitcoin, then I try to frame the acceptance of bitcoin in terms of being practical rather than suggesting that I have a lot of it. I might say that bitcoin tends to be a great means of payment that does not necessarily involve as many transaction costs as a credit card might have... if the alternative payment method might be considered to be a credit card.. .. sometimes it could be a regular vender, or it could be a individual owner or it could even be something like a private transaction, let's say that I was buying a trailer to put my motorcycle or to put my car, so then I see an advertisement of someone selling a trailer for $1,500.. or maybe I was wanting to buy a stove or a refrigerator, and I saw an ad for that, so then I might ask them if they accept bitcoin.. and you never know if I will ever meet them again.. it could be a one time transaction and meeting.
The issue of physical safety for BTC or cryptocurrency hodlers has been debated many times on the forum, and following several kidnappings of crypto influencers' relatives in France (but these kidnappings obviously also occur in other countries), how can btc influencers ensure their safety and that of their loved ones?
Kidnappers don’t work without information. For one to be a victim of kidnappers, it is very possible they might have gotten information about one’s possession in Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a valuable asset, and some people believe whoever has Bitcoin is rich or financially well-off. It is better to be private about one’s Bitcoin investment and achievements.
Privacy matters a lot because what people don’t know, they can’t tamper with. Bitcoin investors should learn how to be private with their investments. Privacy in Bitcoin is not just about keeping the seed phrase private but also about keeping the investment private too.
There is also a balance for any of us wanting to use bitcoin and to have more possibilities of transacting directly with people in the real world.. So hopefully all of us are not scared away from the possibility to transact bitcoin directly with our neighbors and other folks in the community and in the real world.
Are we going to distrust all of our neighbors and the people we meet in real life? Hopefully not.
Those risks you say can be managed properly, Bitcoin influencers can still influence Bitcoin and not say anything regarding their investment, when bragging or much talk on personal holdings keep being discussed, used as a preference so others can pick interest, that makes the influencer a target as the attackers will know a lot before attacking. The same way our celebrities stay out of trouble, same pattern can be followed by rarely discussing where you want to be, secondly also avoid releasing information about current location till you are out of there, just some minor tricks to stay out of trouble.
If I see someone who talk about Bitcoin and he really knows well, even he didn't mention or trying to be low profile, I will consider him to have a lot Bitcoin. Anyone could claim himself don't really understand or don't have a lot Bitcoin, but knowledge don't lie.
Even they didn't show post or share their location to anyone, there's always paparazzi who will taking their photo and let people/their friends know if they meet popular person.
Yep. There are going to be assumptions that folks who talk about bitcoin have bitcoin.
I recall a few years ago Andreas Antonopolis proclaimed that he did not have very many bitcoin, even though he had been traveling around the world and teaching bitcoin for several years, and then someone like Roger Ver made fun of Antonopolis saying that Antonopolis must be a bad money manager since he claimed to not have many if any bitcoin. Soon thereafter, a donation address was created for Antonopolis and millions of dollars worth of bitcoin was soon thereafter sent to such bitcoin donation addresses, since there were several folks who were in bitcoin and grateful towards Antonopolis's helping to bring them into bitcoin (through Antonopolis's bitcoin teachings).
A similar thing seems to be happening with Ross Ulbricht, too. Ulbricht has been receiving a lot of donations, and just recently he had received a donation of 300 bitcoin.. which surely is a lot of value for someone to have had chosen to send to Ulbricht and likely for Ulbricht being both an influential and a sympathetic figure.
In any event, the assumption of the older and even famous bitcoiner having a lot of bitcoin is not necessarily true, yet the mere belief that the older/famous bitcoiner has a lot of bitcoin will still put the older/famous bitcoiner in danger.
Keeping your source of income secret is the most essential behavior to exhibit because every business has their secret that make them ahead of other companies. When you are secret about it, people tends to remove their evil eyes on you rather you look like just an ordinary guy who struggles for survival, you only know how much quantity of Bitcoin accumulated in your wallet and no much noise about it.
It's also a bonus point if you are the type that has less friends and you don't go about arguing with them amount you have in your wallet, doing that is setting yourself a fire that'll burn on you sooner or later.
It is more easier to stay humble and keep your rich and bitcoin investment in secret at individual leve than at business level. If you are an individual investor, you can do your investment secretly and if you are aware about importance of privacy like "Privacy matters", you will not publicly tell anyone about your investment and show off your rich.
You will also not be ready for participating in public events that attract many Bitcoin investors, cryptocurrency enthusiasts and surely there are bad people there too. Your privacy lost forever after you lost it and you can not restore your privacy after it was lost.
https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/privacy.htmlA Modest Privacy Protection Proposal.Going to bitcoin meetups can also be risky, yet at the same time, bitcoin becomes much more powerful when we know about ways to transact with people in real life directly, whether it is for goods and services and/or for interchanging cash for bitcoin.. or bitcoin for cash.
If we are completely scared away from interacting with others in regards to bitcoin and if we are ONLY transacting our bitcoin through KYC services, then bitcoin is going to lose a lot of its power and its value. There could be several ways in which powers that be, banks and/or governments are try to scare us away from the ideas of interacting directly with our neighbors, people in the community and even people who we might get to know through referrals - which sure might also be considered to be somewhat random folks, yet maybe we should still screen any of the folks who we might consider transacting with in bitcoin, and even suggest that we might have practices in which we do not do large transactions with other folks, unless it happens to be a house or something kind of a large transaction like that (buying a Lambo from some one?), but then those kinds of larger purchases (transactions) will have other ways that they are KYC'd and there may be timelines that are in the future that the final transactions are made, even if there might be various deposits along the way, too.
Its a great tool but sadly most of us don't use it the way its meant to be. Most services don't allow us to use it the way its meant to be.
Wish more 'influencers' talk about this.
Such influencers would be hated by government and centralized institutions. Instead of trying to be safe, if someone did that, they open a can of worms, even they use pseudonym or didn't reveal their identity.
If the influencers gone viral, I'm sure they will be targeted by the centralized institutions.
Another thing, influencers make money not only by ads and views, they make money from endorsement, 99.9% of endorsement came from centralized institutions.
Government doesn't care. CIs don't care. I bet you not one single government or CI went to arrest or shutdown the old teachers of Bitcoin like Andreas Ant. He is so famous he still does lectures and talks and always educates people about proper use for privacy.
Like you said if you so fear it, use pseudonym.
Anyway back on point, people talk about anonymity (wrong absolutely) and privacy (usually wrong) as they don't use BTC properly. Influencers number one criminal in this.Even though I am not sure, I think that I get your point slaman29. There are ways to use coin control and even coin management so that bitcoin transactions are not being made from large wallet balances. Anyone going back to various earlier bounces cannot necessarily know that the earlier hops are owned by the same person. There are ways that anyone can screw up, including having high balances on their wallets. I recall various times in both 2017 and also in 2021 in which I accidentally ended up having large balances on hot wallets because I either forgot the balances were there or I was thinking about the balances in terms of their earlier valuations, and between 2015 and 2017, bitcoin prices went up 78x, which is a lot of change in value, so that even a few hundred dollars in 2015 ended up being 10s of thousands of dollars in 2017... and a similar thing happened in 2021 when the value went up around 16x between early 2019 and various points in time in 2021.