Late Wednesday afternoon, Dean Skorka, the CEO of WonderFi Holdings, was kidnapped in downtown Toronto, Canada by a group of kidnappers who forced him into a car for ransom!

Fortunately for him, his ordeal did not last long. The president was later found in Etobicoke, an area located about twenty kilometers from the abduction site. However, he had to pay a ransom of one million Canadian dollars, equivalent to 720 thousand US dollars.

In an email, Dean Skorka was keen to reassure his followers about the situation, emphasizing that the safety of WonderFi’s employees is of utmost importance. He confirmed that customer funds and data are safe and were not affected by this incident.

However, WonderFi is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Thus, this event had a negative impact on its stock price, causing it to drop by 10.81% during Thursday’s trading session. With the stock price at 0.165 Canadian dollars, the company's market capitalization is now 120 million Canadian dollars.

Although such stories have sometimes had tragic endings, the renewed popularity of cryptocurrencies may encourage malicious actors to follow this example.

If you are known to have made significant investments in cryptocurrencies, there are some steps you can take. Aside from caution, the most obvious answer is that if you are attacked, you should not be able to transfer a very large amount.

With that in mind, for example, you can store the bulk of your investments in wallets that you cannot access immediately, or require multiple signatures, or funds deposited in staking with release deadlines.

While solutions are varied and cannot completely eliminate risks, the goal here is deterrence. By making any extortion attempt highly unprofitable in light of the resulting penalties. In fact, once cryptocurrencies are transferred to a malicious entity, the ability to recover them is particularly jeopardized.