[abrahamepton]

Huh? The argument is that they commit crimes and receive ransoms in BTC that they can then convert to USD, EUR. This is a new incentive to commit crimes that simply didn’t exist before; wire transfers and the like are not a good substitute, by design.

[twox2]

If crypto disappears today, ransoms will still be prevalent, but will be much higher as they will be more difficult to pay. It's not a new incentive at all, it just opened up the ease of payment.

[abrahamepton]

Not only does that not make sense…it doesn’t make sense! Why would unpayable ransoms be higher? And my argument is that in fact, “open[ing] up the ease of payment” enables a new form of monetizing activity, so it is a new incentive because it unlocks a new business model.

[cableshaft]

I think what they're saying is if something is hard to do, you "go big or go home". If something is super easy to do, you'll accept less because you're probably hitting up a lot more people with it.

Like they might accept a ransomware of $200 instead of nothing from person X because they're hitting up thousands of people with it, whereas if you go through all the effort to physically kidnap someone and leave a ransom note, you're not going to be able to do that thousands of times, probably just a couple at most, so you're going to demand a large ransom payment to make it worth the effort, like $1 million+.

They also didn't say 'unpayable', btw, just more difficult to pay.

[twox2]

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Also, cost of doing business goes up because and margins go down due to ransom payments that fall through the cracks, so according to the laws of capitalism -> ransom payments go up.