Cryptocurrencies: France, the Primary Target of Violent Attacks
Thirty attacks were recorded in the first half of 2026, more than in all of 2025. Chainalysis’s midyear report identifies France as the global epicenter of “wrench attacks”—physical assaults intended to coerce the transfer of cryptoassets. The surge was triggered by a leak of tax data. And it offers a lesson in wealth management that extends far beyond Bitcoin.
The Wrench Attack
The term comes from a 2009 cartoon that has become a cult classic among cryptographers: what good is unbreakable encryption if the attacker can simply hit the owner with a five-dollar wrench until he gives up his password? Seventeen years later, the joke describes a criminal reality.
Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform that works with government agencies in more than seventy countries, released its mid-year report on crypto crime in early August. France occupies an unexpected position in the report.
It recorded only a few incidents before 2025, then 19 for the entire year of 2025, and 30 in the first half of 2026 alone. The rate rose from 1.9 attacks per month to 4.6. In late June, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez cited more than 70 incidents documented by the authorities, well beyond the official figures.
Long concentrated in the Île-de-France region, business activity has spread to Strasbourg, Marseille, Grenoble, Toulouse, and Nantes. Cumulatively since 2023, France has joined the United States, Brazil, and Thailand in the top four. In 2026 alone, it stands out from the rest.
A data breach at the source
The explanation put forward by Chainalysis is not technical; it is administrative. In 2024, a tax official in the Île-de-France region is suspected of having stolen—and then sold to criminal intermediaries—files on wealthy taxpayers who held cryptoassets: names, addresses, phone numbers, assets, and tax data. The case was made public in January 2026, which may have prompted the holders of these lists to act before they lost their value. That same month, the French crypto tax firm Waltio revealed a separate data breach affecting approximately 50,000 users.
This detail is worth noting because it affects everyone. French account holders must report their digital asset accounts held abroad on Form 3916-bis, or face a fine of 750 euros per account, increased to 1,500 euros for accounts valued at over 50,000 euros. Authorized platforms also collect identity data as part of anti-money laundering efforts. The government and financial intermediaries thus hold, all in one place, a map of who owns what. This is exactly the kind of list a criminal is looking for.
A French Profile: Targeting Family Members
The nature of attacks in France differs from that in the rest of the world. The United States accounts for the vast majority of home burglaries; France, on the other hand, has a significantly higher rate of confinement and kidnapping. Most notably, more than 40% of incidents recorded in France targeted a relative of the victim—a spouse, child, or business partner—rather than the victim themselves, compared to a global average of 25 to 30%. Another indication of premeditation: 93% of identified French victims are local residents. They are not targeted by chance; they are selected from a list.
How Blockchain Is Changing Things for Investigators
There’s a flip side to this story, and it’s quite encouraging. “Cryptocurrencies aren’t anonymous: every transfer resulting from extortion leaves a trail that investigators can follow,” notes François Volpoët, Managing Director for Southern Europe, Israel, and French-speaking Africa at Chainalysis.
The results are as follows. JUNALCO, the national agency for combating organized crime, had carried out approximately 200 arrests, 88 indictments, and 75 pretrial detentions by mid-2026. The success rate of attackers has plummeted: 26% of attempts were successful in 2026, compared to 49% in 2025 and 67% in 2024. Novices send the stolen funds to a centralized exchange platform, where they are frozen; the more experienced ones cover their tracks using decentralized platforms; in one documented case, the funds were funneled through a money-laundering service already in contact with cartel networks.
These attacks, moreover, remain a minor part of the overall crypto crime landscape: $30 million was stolen in 2026, while hacks cost $3.4 billion in 2025. The violence is not directed at the general user base; it targets a specific, identified group.
What an asset holder can do
Three habits, none of which are technical. The first is discretion: don’t flaunt your assets on social media, at a dinner party, or at a professional event.
The second issue concerns storage. Leaving your assets on a platform amounts to delegating the risk of hacking while also exposing yourself to data breaches. Storing them yourself eliminates the middleman, but makes the owner the sole point of failure—including physical risks. For significant assets, the compromise lies in distribution: a small, accessible portion, with the rest stored on a multi-signature device where one-third of the users hold a key. Some hardware wallets also allow you to set up a decoy account, which opens with a recovery code and displays only a modest amount.
The third point is the most practical: no home insurance policy covers cryptoassets, and the coverage purchased by the platforms does not apply to assets held by the owner personally.
The blind spot: the “
” transmission. There remains one issue that this wave paradoxically makes even more urgent. The most effective security measures are also those that cause assets to disappear upon the holder’s death. A recovery phrase that no one knows, and the estate is lost to the heirs even though it remains visible on the blockchain.
The answer isn’t to write it in one’s will, which becomes accessible during the settlement of the estate. It involves depositing it with a notary in a sealed envelope, sharing the secret among several trusted individuals, or establishing a posthumous power of attorney. This is the kind of step people tend to put off. The heirs of those who put it off receive nothing.
