Unless it's Qubes OS.

(I haven't seen anything yet that uses the secure element to control access to a wallet. Are there any technical obstacles to keeping the keys out of main memory?)

Desperate people are willing to risk it all, and usually smart people aren't desperate.

you really think it's that easy?

A lot of people are willing to tolerate risk, that hardly makes them useful. Frequently the opposite.

And there's your answer. He's a student from a non-target school.

It's borderline impossible, especially now with AI and high interest rates, to crack one of these $200k/year jobs. Even if you are smart and determined it simply isn't possible because your resume goes into the garbage.

We should expect more sophisticated crime as we continue to graduate intelligent people into a job market that doesn't want them.

It's similar to how 44% of university-educated Islamic terrorists studied engineering.[2] Engineering is one of the most prestigious programs in the Middle East but there are not a lot of engineering jobs. As a result, a ton of smart, driven, people who would get well-paid jobs in a different economy, instead turn to violence in an attempt to gain power/money/status.

[1] https://www.local10.com/news/local/2026/07/15/feds-accuse-br...

[2] https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/Why_are_t...

Monero could of helped, although its not easy to transfer BTC to Monero without P2P trades, as effectively every exchange requires KYC. Those source and destination wallet addresses are tainted, you wouldn't be able to deposit on any mainstream exchange and if they do, its for a honey pot purpose.