French authorities have recorded 90 cases involving kidnapping, abduction, extortion, threats, and violent theft related to cryptocurrencies in just over seven months.
The figures, provided to Cointelegraph by the French Interior Ministry, are from Jan. 1 to mid-August 2026. Authorities also recorded 223 arrests, and 126 people were imprisoned from January to July.
The figures equate to a new case every two and a half days, although there is no official year-on-year comparison to understand if the problem has become suddenly worse: “We do not have the statistics on these items for 2025, as the recording of events began on Jan. 1, 2026,” the ministry says.
What makes the new numbers even more striking is they are much higher than other public trackers of meatspace attacks.
Chainalysis counted 30 publicly known violent crypto incidents in France through mid-2026, but noted that the scale was “almost certainly larger.” Security firm Gart.io has tracked 73 attacks in France in the year to date, which puts France in the number one spot ahead of the USA on 66 real world attacks, and the UK on 27.
The rise in physical attacks — known as “wrench attacks” — on crypto holders in France points to something bigger than a rash of isolated incidents. Leaked personal data may be the culprit.
So, why France?
Wrench attacks are far from a new phenomenon. Bitcoin security advocate Jameson Lopp’s long-running directory of known physical attacks has documented 365 cases across 60 countries between 2014 and 2026, with France topping the leaderboard.
Related: Home invasions became most common crypto wrench attack in H1 2026: CertiK
What seems to be new, however, is the speed at which violent crypto crimes are spreading throughout the country. Attacks have gone beyond Paris to places including Strasbourg, Marseille, Grenoble, Toulouse and Nantes, according to Chainalysis.
Violent attacks above the historical baseline. Source: Chainalysis.
Criminals aren’t targeting crypto rich tourists, and of the victims with known residency, 93% were French.
Chainalysis head researcher Eric Jardine tells Cointelegraph the surge is “very likely” due to a “significant data breach.”
“These sort of breaches expose more than financial information; they reveal who holds crypto, where they live, and how to find them.”
That makes physical attacks against crypto holders particularly insidious because they can begin long before a thug shows up with a wrench demanding your seed phrase or a crypto transfer. The assailants first need to know who has something worth stealing, where they live and how to reach them.
Jardine says the French tax authority compromise in 2024, where a tax official in the Paris area “leaked PII, financial and crypto holding information on French taxpayers,” may have been the accelerant. Chainalysis records show attacks surged from late November of the same year.
Chainalysis also points to a further incident in January 2026, with crypto tax reporting firm Waltio disclosing a breach affecting some 50,000 users, creating yet more useful data for attackers to mark their targets.
Francis Pouliot, founder of Canadian Bitcoin exchange Bull Bitcoin, has repeatedly challenged Europe’s DAC8 crypto reporting rules in France, which expand tax reporting and information-sharing requirements for crypto users across the European Union.
“DAC8 has transformed the concept of Know Your Customer into Kill Your Customer,” he said, along with describing France as the “crypto kidnapping capital of the world.”
The world of physical attacks. Source: Gart.io
When the target isn’t the Bitcoiner
According to Chainalysis, one of the most revealing changes may be who is being attacked. Globally, relatives and acquaintances accounted for around 25% to 30% of violent crypto incidents by early 2026, and in France, the proportion was more than 40%.
In May 2026, six men allegedly tried to abduct the wife of The Sandbox co-founder Sébastien Borget from the couple’s home in Villenoy, France, with one attacker posing as a delivery driver to get her to open the gate.
In August, a couple in rural France reportedly endured three separate attempts to break into their home after buying a property previously occupied by crypto millionaires, after the previous owners’ tax information and address were leaked onto the dark web.
A similar tactic was used in 2025, when the father of a crypto entrepreneur was abducted in Paris and held for two days, with the kidnappers reportedly cutting off part of his finger and sending it to his son while demanding $5.6 million in cryptocurrency.
Jardine says the targeting of relatives and associates “suggests criminals are doing reconnaissance before they act,” whether by “monitoring social media, analyzing blockchain data, using leaked information, or receiving tips from insiders.”
That turns the usual idea of a crypto target on its head, since the person with the wallet may not be the person standing in front of the attacker.
French authorities are responding by treating the attacks as organized crime, coordinating investigations through JUNALCO, the country’s specialized organized crime jurisdiction.
The $5 wrench conundrum
Most crypto holders have learned how to protect their seed phrases, set up hardware wallets, test their environments and avoid clicking on phishing links.
While those things are still important, none of them will help if a bad actor already knows who they are, where they live and that they have something worth stealing in the first place.
Cryptography can protect a wallet, but it can’t stop an attacker with a $5 wrench.
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