Physical attacks on cryptocurrency holders keep ticking up
Conferences, exchange chiefs, and even rumored bitcoin creators are all spending on security.
When you think of crime within the crypto world, your mind likely conjures visions of opportunists conning unwitting victims with too-good-to-be-true investment offers, hackers infiltrating exchanges as they manipulate streams of “Matrix”-like code, or high-profile cases where figureheads of major players are sentenced to decades in prison for fraud or money laundering.
Blockchain gangs
What you’re maybe less inclined to imagine, however, are kidnappings, violent assaults, and home invasions — like the kind outlined in a Bloomberg report yesterday, or the spree of incidents that swept through Los Angeles and the Bay Area late last year. And yet, physical crimes against crypto holders (or “wrench attacks”) continue to rise around the world.
According to 2025 data from blockchain security company CertiK, cited by Bloomberg, the number of physical attacks related to crypto rose 75% last year to 72 verified incidents. The double dose of bad news for enthusiasts? One: that figure’s thought to be a serious underestimate, given the amount of crimes that go unreported and the ones that are dealt with privately (paid off), and two: according to an update earlier this month, 2026 is tracking to be even worse.
As CertiK noted in its report on 2026 physical attacks so far, if the current rate continues, the year-end verified tally could reach 130 tracked incidents, not far off from double the 2025 figure and more than 3x the 41 incidents it counted the year before that. Though that might not seem like many, the amount of money that the perpetrators are cashing in from the altercations is not to be sniffed at, with the estimated losses from the 34 incidents this year already totalling over $101 million, per CertiK. And, again, that will almost certainly be an undercount.
As the attacks rise, crypto conferences, execs at top exchanges, and even Adam Back, the subject of an April New York Times investigation that suggested he might be the real Satoshi Nakamoto (the elusive figure who created bitcoin), are all, as Bloomberg observed, now splashing out on their own security teams.
