France logs 77 crypto 'wrench attacks' this year — a reminder to guard your privacy, not just your keys

France recorded 77 kidnappings, extortions, or attempted extortions tied to cryptocurrency in the first half of 2026, up sharply from 45 in all of last year, the country's interior minister said. The rise has made France a global hotspot for so-called “wrench attacks,” where criminals use physical violence or threats to force victims to hand over their crypto.

The name is a dark joke from a web comic: no matter how strong your encryption is, an attacker with a $5 wrench can simply threaten you until you unlock your wallet yourself. These attacks skip the technical hacking entirely and go straight after the person. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called the trend serious and promised a three-part plan, including better intelligence-sharing and a rapid-alert hotline that has already drawn hundreds of sign-ups.

Security firm CertiK, which tracks these incidents, says France has become the “epicenter” partly because of a local culture of publicly showing off holdings and voluntarily revealing identities, combined with past data leaks. In one well-known case, Ledger co-founder David Balland was kidnapped for ransom in January 2025 before police rescued him. Ledger's 2020 customer-data breach, which exposed hundreds of thousands of records, still fuels phishing and targeting today.

For a beginner, the lesson is simple and it costs nothing: privacy is part of security. Don't post about how much crypto you own, don't tie your real name and address to your holdings in public, and be careful which services you hand your personal details to. A hardware wallet protects your keys, but it can't protect you if everyone knows you have one. The safest amount of attention on your holdings is none.