- A total of 11 incidents involving attacks on investors have been documented in 2026.
- These wrench attacks display a high level of violence.
- The surge in such incidents corresponds with the growing interest in digital assets among investors.
This story first appeared in The Guidance newsletter on February 9. Subscribe here.
If violence against crypto investors was a significant concern in 2025, the early months of 2026 indicate this trend is continuing.
Within the first two months of 2026, there have already been eleven wrench attacks reported against investors and those close to them, as per data from Jameson Lopp’s GitHub records.
Lopp serves as the co-founder and chief security officer at CasaHODL, a self-custody crypto wallet.
The nature of these incidents is harrowing.
In France, a family of four was assaulted and restrained by three assailants in January as part of an effort to extort cryptocurrencies from them. Separate to this, three teenagers, posing as Amazon delivery personnel, threatened a man in England with knives to coerce him into surrendering his crypto. Additionally, a Chinese national in Pasay City, Philippines, was abducted by four men demanding $1 million in cryptocurrency from him.
Impressively, all these attacks happened in January.
Increase in Wrench Attacks
These attacks have plagued the cryptocurrency community for several years, but a recent wave of violent incidents has alarmed crypto investors significantly.
Wrench attacks gained notoriety last year when criminals abducted David Balland, a co-founder of the hardware wallet company Ledger, along with his wife in France.
Another shocking case revolved around a brutal home invasion that came to light in November, when court records revealed that in 2024, a man and his wife were waterboarded and their daughter assaulted to steal over $1.5 million in Bitcoin.
Why is there such an increase in violence?
In France, where many of this year’s incidents have taken place, several factors are at play.
French media reported that there was a breach in June 2025 involving an employee from the tax agency who was supplying criminal associates with the identities of various crypto investors.
In January, a breach at Waltio, a platform for calculating and reporting crypto capital gains for tax purposes, compromised data of 50,000 users, including email addresses and tax records for 2024. The hackers exploited this information.
In addition to data breaches, the growing presence of digital assets makes them easier targets for criminals.
“With the rise of cryptocurrency usage and the increasing amount of value held by individuals, there is a greater temptation for criminals to bypass technical safeguards and go directly after people,” stated Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs, in a conversation with DL News in January.
Ensuring Safety
In response to these attacks, various protective measures are emerging. Solutions include hiring bodyguards, employing constant surveillance and, of course, carrying personal weapons.
Also developing within the crypto community are innovative technological measures designed to enhance user protection—potentially granting them extra time to involve law enforcement.
Elliot Friedman, the founder of Solidity Labs and a member of the cybersecurity collective Security Alliance, has created a timelock feature for crypto wallets known as Kleidi.
This feature establishes a delay for transactions.
Therefore, on-chain transactions can take up to a day or even a month to complete, based on the user’s settings.
“If someone coerces you to transfer funds—physically or through other means—you can honestly say: ‘I’m unable to do that. My wallet restricts me,’” he explained.
Whether attackers will understand this is another matter entirely.
Liam Kelly serves as a DeFi correspondent for DL News in Berlin. Have insights to share? Reach out at liam@dlnews.com.