Another kidnapping related to cryptocurrency has been reported in Paris, marking the tenth such incident in France this year.
Circumstances of the Abduction
According to Le Parisien, a 23-year-old man was abducted on Tuesday while running errands. He was allegedly coerced into calling his partner and instructing her to hand over a bag containing a Ledger hardware wallet — used to store the private key for his crypto assets — along with €5,000 in cash.
"Violence was used to make him talk," an unnamed source told Le Parisien.
Surge in Attacks
This incident marks the 10th confirmed ‘wrench attack’ — a term coined to describe physical coercion to extract crypto keys — in France this year alone. In total, at least 32 such attacks have been reported globally in 2025, according to an open database maintained by Jameson Lopp, who has tracked these events for nearly a decade.
Precautionary Measures for Crypto Holders
As the frequency of these violent incidents rises, security experts are urging crypto holders to reconsider their asset storage strategies and take additional precautions to prevent real-world threats.
The situation surrounding cryptocurrency-related kidnappings poses a serious threat to digital asset owners. The use of violence for information extraction is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon.
