All "tech" ransoms ask for bitcoin payments - except it isn't as untraceable as they think. Just more "easy" than, say, a Moneygram - the victim buys bitcoins and transfers them to the wallet indicated by the criminal, then the criminal makes them "jump" across a few other wallets before exchanging them into cash again on likely a different exchange center than the one they suggested the victim to use, or directly use the bitcoins to buy other illicit services or goods.

AFAIK some dictatorships even have "official" scammer teams tasked with gettign funding for their otherwise untenable state by running online extortions and scams - pretty much all the article I read about the AO3 outage do say that the motivations under the attack might just be a ruse to cover such an operation.

Dowining AO3 due to its "decadent NSFW and LBGT content" being against their religious beliefs... but, hey, it's fine if you pay them 30k. I call bullcrap on that.