[ssprang]

Sure, but his bitcoins probably aren't just sitting around either. The fear was that he'd be kidnapped/tortured in order to acquire them. If we're allowing for that, it seems like anyone with sufficient wealth would be a target.

[dllthomas]

It's still easier to un-reversibly steal large $X in BTC than in USD, in most of the ways people store large amounts of the respective currencies. Stealing from your bank acount involves more people and more moving parts and thus more risk (and large transfers are watched).

I agree there's (hopefully) a good chance his BTC are in cold storage in a safety deposit box, or something. People fail to do that with BTC more often than people fail to put millions of USD in the bank, though.

Actually, I've been wondering if he didn't withdraw from BTC because he was embarrassed about having lost the private keys to his early accounts... :-P Not that I really think that likely, either.