OK sure, but you don't really need to scale, just find the one guy with $500,000,000 in BTC that you want and hit him.

Again, lazy!

Yes: if you have half of a billion dollars in BTC, sure – you're a victim to the wrench, be it private or public. If you're a terrorist mastermind, you're likely going to Gitmo and will be placed in several stress positions by mean people until you say what they want to hear.

Extreme high-value targets always have been, and always will be, vulnerable to directed attacks. But these improvements are deeply significant for everyone who is not a high-value target – like me, and (possibly) you!

In my lifetime, the government has gone from "the feds can get a warrant to record me speaking, in my own voice, to anyone I dial over my phone" to "oh, he's using (e2e encrypted platform) – that's a massive amount more work if we can even break it". That means the spectrum of people who can be targeted is significantly lower than it used to be.

Spec-fiction example: consider what the NSA could do today, with whisper.cpp & no e2e encrypted calls.