Except people steal things that aren’t money
You’d just do heists of physical goods. Stealing the diamond launch codes from a vault instead of cash.
People are being robbed, by in-person, physical coercion, for their bitcoins.
I want to see a bank robbery movie, with masked gunmen, set at Kraken, or some other big crypto exchange. Instead of running out with bags of cash, they have a USB drive.
Okay, but it has to be accurate, I don’t want any “movie magic”. Flip it 3 times.
Crypto wallet theft is already a thing, can do it from across the world in many cases
They would have to replace these lost plots with American politician biographies.
What’s wrong with holding people at gunpoint and requesting a cryptocurrency transaction?
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Shooting the mailbox twice is a line that gets me laughing every time
Doritos™ presents, I don’t normally read long posts but I was hooked from the start.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Absolute cinema
New favorite copypasta. Mmmm!
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That this has not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature can only be described as a crime against humanity.
For an older, milder version, I recommend Jennifer Government by Max Barry. Company was fun as well.
I also felt like there was a certain whiff of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace about it, like how years are names after corporate sponsors.
Best copypasta of all time. We must always upvote these.
“Just type in your private key and nobody gets hurt”
I guess we’ll need a variant of this comic
this is a robbery put the bit coins in the bag 💥🔫
Amouranth?
“La casa de papel” a popular spanish bank heist series from 2017 is probably the answer to your hypothesis. It also doesn’t involve stealing cash.
Isn’t the first series involving cash? (the second is gold IIRC)
Have we already forgotten the plot of “Superman III”?
Like stage coach robberies. You don’t see them too often either.
What? I did that last week! Made out with a monocle, and several hundred half pennies!
This has already happened in Denmark, coins are only used for shopping carts
This has already happened in Denmark, coins are only used for shopping carts
Denmark is not completely cashless. You can still pay in stores with cash and get cash from ATMs and banks.
Yeah but bank robberies are pretty much a thi ng of the past since most people are cashless
In China, everyone uses WeChat to pay for stuff, but banks still have cash.
What I mean is, there will be a day where there is zero cash, and banks only exist as a customer support hub. Then, there’s nothing in the banks to steal.
you can absolutely steal data stored by banks
I mean barely… Most bank offices in Sweden do not handle cash at all.
They just rob data instead of money
Huh. No more cash tips. No $20 in a birthday card. Sorry homeless people, go die in a gutter (preferably in a back alley)!
Lost your device? Too bad. Can’t lock that card or use woogle pay, good luck borrowing someone’s when they work all the time.
The homeless have already graduated to qr codes in china. I’m pretty sure something similar will happen in the rest of the world.
Oh hey! USA.
No more cash tips.
I mean, its been happening. Look at food delivery apps.
Sorry homeless people, go die in a gutter (preferably in a back alley)!
Homeless people have phones, well, they have cheap phones, but still a phone. They could probably set up a Cashapp/Venmo. Some places still gives free (government subsidized) phones, most of the US does, homeless people are definitely qualified to get them (as long as the current administration doesn’t gut it 👀)
And even if the government guts the free government phone programs, there are still many cheap options. For example, in the US, there are very cheap usable phones that are like $50 or less. They are locked phones, but its the reason why they are so cheap. They could get the cheapest plan just to have usable number, and just hang out near a mcdonalds and use their wifi. There’s Moto G Play that’s $30 at a local Walmart/Target type stores. Won’t be fun to use (with all the lag), but good enough to use Cashapp or Venmo.
ITT: people who have never known homeless people that live* in food deserts with no fast food other than Lance crackers from the convenience store seven miles away, and one cell tower* serving two counties. I’m not being hyperbolic.
Oh lol, I’ve lived in cities most of my life, probably why I never think from a rural perspective.
It happens. Eta: where I live, people have to have a permanent physical and mailing address to receive services. A homeless guy asked me during a trip to town for$2 to get a piece of chicken from the had station recently. I didn’t have it and felt so so bad.
It would be interesting seeing “period pieces” where it’s just normal banks
Kind of like westerns where people had duels and accused each other of horse theft pew, pew!
Reminds me of how the word “pirate” means something very different now than it did 100 years ago.
Maybe a cyberheist will become the next big thing if meatpace has nothing worth klepping.
Imagine a story, where a crew of netrunners enters a datafort, and some of them get zeroed by the black ICE, but some of them narrowly escape with the loot. Yeah, that sound like a GPT prompt I could try.
