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UK’s First Bitcoin Armed Robbery

Photo courtesy of UK’s metro shows the couple’s four-bedroom home where they were held at gunpoint by armed robbers.
Photo courtesy of UK’s metro shows the couple’s four-bedroom home where they were held at gunpoint by armed robbers.
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UK’s First Bitcoin Armed Robbery

Photo courtesy of UK’s metro shows the couple’s four-bedroom home where they were held at gunpoint by armed robbers.
Photo courtesy of UK’s metro shows the couple’s four-bedroom home where they were held at gunpoint by armed robbers.

Armed robbers have raided the house of a British virtual currency trader, forcing him to transfer Bitcoins after tying up his wife and threatening him with a gun, British media reported on Monday.

The robbery happened on January 22 at the couple's home in the village of Moulsford in southeast England, according to the Daily Mail, which said the cryptocurrency crime was the first of its kind.

Four robbers wearing balaclavas broke into the house of Danny Aston, 30, and his wife Amy Jay, 31.

A Thames Valley Police spokesman quoted by the Daily Telegraph said only that police were investigating an "aggravated burglary" in Moulsford last week and that the occupants of the house had been "threatened".

No arrests have been made but the reports said that Aston may have been targeted because of his high profile in the cryptocurrency community.

According to company registry records, Aston and Jay are directors of Aston Digital Currencies, which specializes in managing virtual currency portfolios.

The firm was created in June 2017 at a time when Bitcoin was trading at around 2,500 euros.

It has since risen sharply to a peak of 16,323 euros on December 17 before falling back below 10,000 euros.

The Sun quoted a neighbor as saying that the couple had gone into hiding at a secret address after the terrifying raid.

Using a pseudonym, Aston has carried out more than 100,000 transactions with 16,375 partners.

Some of them referred to him online using his real name, which may have led robbers directly to him.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency created from computer code that allows anonymous transactions. Unlike a real-world unit such as the US dollar or euro, it has no central bank and is not backed by any government.

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Varieties

Ozempic Hailed as 'Fountain of Youth' that Slows Aging

The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)
The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)
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Ozempic Hailed as 'Fountain of Youth' that Slows Aging

The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)
The is available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic (Photo by Reuters)

The anti-obesity drug Ozempic could slow down ageing and has “far-reaching benefits” beyond what was imagined, researchers have suggested.

Multiple studies have found semaglutide (available under the brand names Wegovy and Ozempic) reduced the risk of death in people who were obese or overweight and had cardiovascular disease without diabetes, The Independent reported.

Responding to research published in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology, Professor Harlan M Krumholz from the Yale School of Medicine, said: “Semaglutide, perhaps by improving cardiometabolic health, has far-reaching benefits beyond what we initially imagined.”

He added: “These ground-breaking medications are poised to revolutionise cardiovascular care and could dramatically enhance cardiovascular health.”

Multiple reports also quoted Professor Krumholz saying: “Is it a fountain of youth?”

He said: “I would say if you’re improving someone’s cardiometabolic health substantially, then you are putting them in a position to live longer and better.

“It’s not just avoiding heart attacks. These are health promoters. It wouldn’t surprise me that improving people’s health this way actually slows down the ageing process.”

The studies, presented at the European Society of Cardiology Conference 2024 in London, were produced from the Select trial which studied 17,604 people aged 45 or older who were overweight or obese and had established cardiovascular disease but not diabetes.

They received 2.4 mg of semaglutide or a placebo and were tracked for more than three years.

A total of 833 participants died during the study with 5 percent of the deaths were related to cardiovascular causes and 42 per cent from others.

Infection was the most common cause death beyond cardiovascular, but it occurred at a lower rate in the semaglutide group than the placebo group.

People using the weight-loss drug were just as likely to catch Covid-19, but they were less likely to die from it – 2.6 percent dying among those on semaglutide versus 3.1 per cent on the placebo.

Researchers found women experienced fewer major adverse cardiovascular events, but semaglutide “consistently reduced the risk” of adverse cardiovascular outcomes regardless of sex.

Dr Benjamin Scirica, lead author of one of the studies and a professor of cardiovascular medicine at Harvard Medical School, said: “The robust reduction in non-cardiovascular death, and particularly infections deaths, was surprising and perhaps only detectable because of the Covid-19-related surge in non-cardiovascular deaths.

“These findings reinforce that overweight and obesity increases the risk of death due to many etiologies, which can be modified with potent incretin-based therapies like semaglutide.”

Dr Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, praised the researchers for adapting the study to look at Covid-19 when the pandemic started.

He said the findings that the weight-loss drug to reduce Covid-19 mortality rates were “akin to a vaccine against the indirect effects of a pathogen.”