Violent kidnappings, torture, and home invasions targeting cryptocurrency holders surged worldwide to a new high in 2025, according to a new report warning that, “violence is no longer an edge case, but a structural risk of digital asset ownership.”

72 verified crypto “wrench attacks” happened last year, up 75% from 2024, marking “a clear inflection point” where physical coercion became a core threat vector in crypto, according to a new report from blockchain security firm CertiK.

Confirmed financial losses in 2025 exceeded $40.9 million, up 44% year over year, with kidnapping the most common attack method and physical assaults jumping 250%.

Driving that increase is a rise in crypto-related violence in Europe, which accounted for over 40% of global incidents in 2025, up from just 22% in 2024.

France has emerged as the epicenter of this crisis, recording 19 attacks throughout the year and surpassing the U.S., which saw eight incidents.

While the U.S. saw its share of incidents drop from 36.6% in 2024 to just 12.5% in 2025, Europe's surge was driven by proliferating crypto-jacking groups in France, Spain, and Sweden.

​​A public wrench-attack database maintained by Jameson Lopp, CTO of security firm Casa, shows that seven of nine documented wrench-attack incidents this year occurred in France, pointing to the country’s disproportionate exposure to physical crypto-targeting crimes.

"Given France's relatively high crime rates, it is not particularly difficult to argue that the country could see more crimes like this," cybercrime consultant David Sehyeon Baek previously told Decrypt. "What we are really seeing is just the tip of the iceberg. Crypto crime is indeed heavily underreported, and that is not accidental."

Last June, French prosecutors charged a tax official with abusing access to government databases to identify crypto investors and allegedly passing their personal and financial details to organized crime groups.

Asia remained a persistent high-risk zone with 33.3% of wrench attacks, largely targeting crypto-tourists and expats in hubs like Thailand and Hong Kong, a shift from earlier years when most such attacks were concentrated in Asia and North America.

Last year’s first quarter saw 21 incidents in total worldwide, while May was the most violent single month with 10 recorded attacks, according to the report.

Per CertiK, the year’s major wrench-attack incidents included the January 2025 kidnapping of Ledger co-founder David Balland and his wife in France, where attackers severed his finger and demanded €10 million in crypto before a 48-hour police manhunt led to 10 arrests.

Protecting yourself from wrench attacks

CertiK's report outlined several defense strategies to reduce vulnerability and coercion effectiveness.

The firm recommends that individuals maintain decoy wallets with plausible amounts that can be surrendered immediately, enforce geographic separation between seed phrases and hardware wallets, and minimize their public crypto footprint by avoiding portfolio screenshots and wallet address disclosures.

For institutions and high-net-worth individuals, CertiK advises implementing multi-signature wallet architectures with 2-of-3 or 3-of-5 signature schemes, time-locked smart contracts that enforce mandatory delays on large withdrawals, and formalized executive protection protocols extending to family members and close associates.

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