France is the epicenter of a crypto kidnapping wave, and now it is fighting back

Crypto's biggest security story of the year is not a smart-contract exploit. It is happening in the physical world, and France is at the center of it. In the first six months of 2026, French authorities recorded 77 crypto-related kidnappings and extortion attempts, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. That is a sharp jump from 45 cases in all of 2025, and it has pushed the government to respond at a national level.

These are what the security industry bluntly calls wrench attacks: instead of hacking a wallet, criminals target the person who controls it and coerce them into handing over access. According to the blockchain security firm CertiK, physical assaults aimed at extracting digital assets rose about 41% early in the year, and France alone accounted for an estimated 70% of the documented cases worldwide.

Who is being targeted, and for how much

The victims have not been anonymous. Reported targets have included senior figures connected to well-known names in the industry, among them Ledger, Binance France, The Sandbox, and Paymium. The ransom demands have been large, generally ranging from around 700,000 euros to more than a million dollars, typically payable in Bitcoin. The logic is grim but simple: crypto can be moved instantly and is hard to claw back, which makes a coerced transfer attractive to a kidnapper.

France's response

Rather than treat these as isolated crimes, the interior minister laid out a coordinated national strategy. It rests on three pillars: wider intelligence sharing on the criminal networks behind the attacks, a formal expert network connecting security officials with the crypto industry through the trade association ADAN, and stronger operational cooperation between French services and international partners. In other words, treat crypto crime as organized crime, and police it accordingly.

Why it matters for you

You do not need to be a founder to take the lesson. The common thread in these cases is visibility: attackers go after people they believe hold a lot and can be found. That makes discretion a genuine security measure. Do not broadcast your holdings, be careful about who knows what you own, and understand that a hardware wallet protects your keys from the internet but not from someone standing in front of you. For the digital side of protecting yourself, our hardware wallet guide and scam-avoidance guide are the place to start.

Our read

The following is ScalpStreet analysis, not reporting. This is the maturing pain of an asset class going mainstream. As more ordinary people hold real value in crypto, the threat model widens from code to the physical world, and the countries with the most active markets are seeing it first. France moving to treat this as organized crime is the right instinct. For everyone else, the takeaway is quieter and older than crypto itself: wealth is safest when it is private.