KIEV — Welcome to Europe’s Wild East.
Forty-year-old Pavel Lerner, the CEO of Exmo Finance, a popular bitcoin exchange, was leaving his office on the day after Christmas when he was accosted and dragged into a black Mercedes-Benz by armed men in balaclavas. The leading Russian blockchain expert was released 48 hours later after paying a million-dollar ransom in bitcoins from his digital wallet.
News of his kidnapping shocked the global crypto-community and even caused bitcoin’s price to briefly plummet. But the abduction was just one in a rapidly growing list of developments that have shocked Ukraine’s burgeoning cryptocurrency industry, a scene …read more
Source: POLITICO – Europe Edition
