Four things used to be true about getting robbed for your bitcoin. Most thieves had never heard of it. The ones who had wouldn't meet you. If they met you, they couldn't tell it was you. And if they came anyway, you probably knew more than they did. Inside that window, "stay quiet and deny it" was close to a complete defence, because the attack mostly never started. All four are gone. The third is the one that did it — identification used to be hard, and leaked databases, tax records and exchange data have made it easy. Those are records you can neither audit nor revoke. You can't un-leak a leak. So the advice wasn't stupid. It was sensible for the period it came from, and it was inherited from that period rather than derived from a threat model. The period ended in a direction that doesn't reverse. New piece, free, no signup: https://github.com/Yuri-SVB/great-wall-posts/tree/main/posts/003-the-window-has-closed Also in 🇧🇷 Português · 🇫🇷 Français · 🇮🇹 Italiano If it's useful, pass it to someone still running the old advice.