2025: The Year the $5 Wrench Went Parabolic 🔧📈

Why Bitcoiners Need to Care About Real-World Attacks (Not Just Red Candles)

Let’s talk about the one chart nobody wants to pump: violent, real-world attacks on people for their crypto.

In 2025, “$5 wrench attacks” – physical coercion to steal your Bitcoin/crypto – have basically become a disgusting new asset class: kidnappings, home invasions, fake delivery drivers, and torture aimed at your seed phrase instead of your Rolex.

This isn’t FUD. It’s data + headlines. Let’s zoom out.

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Quote of the Day 🧵

“Encryption protects data.
OPSEC protects people.
Forget either one and the other stops mattering.”

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TL;DR for the ADHD Bitcoiner 🧠⚡

• Frequency:

  • Jameson Lopp’s running database shows 25 wrench attacks in the first 21 weeks of 2025 – roughly one per week and on pace with his prediction for the year. (BitPinas)

  • A separate roundup notes more than one physical crypto attack per week globally in 2025, drawing on multiple news + intel sources. (netlok.com)

• Trend:

  • Merkle Science reviewed 60+ physical crypto-related attacks from Jan 2024–July 2025, confirming this is not just “a few weird stories,” it’s a real pattern. (Merkle Science)

  • A Fortune/Yahoo summary of a specialty insurance product notes 24 attacks in 2024 and 8 in January 2025 alone. That’s an annualized “lol nope” rate. (Yahoo Finance)

• Where it’s happening:

  • France has become a hotspot, with around 10 wrench attacks in 2025, almost a quarter of global cases by some counts. (AInvest)

  • North America is fully in the game: brutal kidnappings in New York, a family held hostage in Minnesota, high-profile cases in Canada, and now an $11M heist in San Francisco. (Reuters)

  • Asia & Australia have seen crypto-linked kidnappings in India and a 600-mile abduction over a disputed crypto deal in Australia. (The Times of India)

• Victims:

  • High-net-worth holders, founders, execs, and loud crypto guys who love to tweet “made it” screenshots. Family members get targeted too. (TRM Labs)

The bottom line: this risk is still rare, but it’s rising, and it is not just a meme anymore.

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What Even Is a $5 Wrench Attack? (For the New Kids)

The term comes from an XKCD comic: instead of trying to crack your encryption, the attacker just bonks you with a wrench until you give up your password.

In crypto terms, it’s any situation where someone uses real-world force or threats to make you:

• unlock your wallet

• sign a transaction

• reveal your seed phrase

• or transfer your coins while they watch

No malware, no fancy exploits. Just old-school criminal energy meets digital money. (Finance Magnates)

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2025 Wrench-Attack Scoreboard 🧮🌍

This is not a complete list (lots of cases never hit the press), but here’s a snapshot of what we’re seeing this year:

🇺🇸 United States

• San Francisco – $11M fake delivery heist (November 2025)
  A thief dressed as a delivery driver gets into a Mission Dolores home, pulls a gun, duct-tapes the resident, and walks away with ~$11 million in crypto, plus phone and laptop. Classic high-value wrench attack in a bougie neighborhood. (The Independent)

• Minnesota – $8M family hostage situation (September 2025)
  Two Texas brothers allegedly hold a Minnesota family at gunpoint for nine hours, demanding access to their wallets and ultimately stealing $8M in crypto, with school events cancelled for safety because the situation was that intense. (ABC News)

• New York – 3-week kidnapping for Bitcoin password (May 2025)
  A crypto investor lures an Italian associate to NYC, then allegedly kidnaps and abuses him for weeks in a Manhattan townhouse to get his Bitcoin password. Prosecutors describe severe violence and threats to family. (Reuters)

🇨🇦 Canada

• Brutal home invasion, ~$1.6M stolen (reported November 2025)
  Decrypt details a wrench attack in Canada where attackers invaded a home, abused family members, and forced them to give up access to about $1.6M in Bitcoin. It’s one of the starkest 2025 examples of how ugly this can get. (Decrypt)

🇫🇷 France – The Current “Wrench Capital”

TRM Labs and follow-on coverage paint France as the epicenter of 2025 wrench attacks:

• Attempted kidnapping of a crypto CEO’s family in Paris.

• Kidnapping of a crypto entrepreneur’s father, with multi-million-euro ransom demands.

• Abduction of a Ledger co-founder with a severed finger used as leverage (yes, it’s that bad). (TRM Labs)

One analysis says France has seen 10 wrench attacks in 2025, accounting for nearly a quarter of global incidents. (AInvest)

🇮🇳 India

• Jaipur police arrested an engineering student linked to a crypto scam + kidnapping, where victims were lured and then forced to transfer crypto worth about ₹4.5 lakh (~$5k). Smaller ticket size, same pattern: social engineering → physical coercion → forced transfer. (The Times of India)

🇦🇺 Australia

• A 59-year-old man is allegedly kidnapped and forced to drive ~600 miles from Adelaide to Sydney over a $40k–50k crypto deal gone bad. He’s assaulted and threatened along the way before escaping at a gas station and getting help. (People.com)

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So… How Big Is This Market of Violence?

A few data points we can reasonably stack:

• 24 wrench-type attacks recorded in 2024 and 8 in January 2025 alone, per a chronology quoted in a violent-robbery/insurance article. (Yahoo Finance)

• Lopp’s public database: 25 attacks in the first 21 weeks of 2025 → roughly 1 per week and tracking his “one per week all year” prediction. (BitPinas)

• Merkle Science: 60+ physical crypto attacks from Jan 2024–July 2025, using public reports plus Lopp’s dataset. (Merkle Science)

• A security analysis citing TRM Labs: France’s 10+ incidents ~ ¼ of global 2025 wrench attacks, implying ~40 or so cases worldwide at that point – and that’s just what’s documented. (AInvest)

Now add under-reporting (people who are rich, paranoid, and crypto-native don’t love going public with “I got robbed”), and it’s safe to say:

We’re probably dealing with dozens of known cases per year, and total incidents are likely significantly higher than the official count.

Is this common? No.
Is it non-trivial for high-net-worth, loud-on-Twitter Bitcoiners? Absolutely yes.

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Why 2025 Specifically? What Changed?

A few forces are colliding:

1. Crypto wealth is more visible than ever

   • Public on-chain balances, NFT flexing, “I made it” posts, and conference fame all paint giant bullseyes on certain people.

   • TRM and others explicitly call out publicly visible wealth + easy OSINT (social media, domain records, court docs) as fuel for these attacks. (TRM Labs)

2. Bitcoin (and broader crypto) have matured into “kidnap-worthy” money

   • This isn’t 2013 magic Internet points anymore; it’s “finance guy with a private jet, townhouse in Soho, and eight-figure balance” money. (The Washington Post)

   • Private keys are now treated like gold bars in some crime reporting – a thing you can steal and flip. (AInvest)

3. Self-custody is more common

   • Hardware wallets, multi-sig, cold storage – all great for blocking hackers.

   • But the more you control access, the more you are the attack surface when a criminal wants your coins. Ledger, Casa, and others have started explicitly calling this out. (Ledger)

4. Insurance & security markets are evolving

   • Lloyd’s-backed products and boutique coverage now explicitly mention “wrench attacks” as a covered risk for certain institutional/high-net-worth clients. (Fortune)

   • That’s bullish for security vendors, bearish for people who thought “my Ledger in the sock drawer” was the endgame.

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Common Patterns in 2025 Cases 🔍

Across countries and cases, a few themes keep repeating:

1. The Target Profile

If this sounds like you, fix your life:

• You’re publicly known as “the Bitcoin guy”

• You flex amounts (“I just passed 7-figures in BTC, let’s gooo”)

• You run a crypto company, fund, or are close family

• Your home address, routines, and social life are easy to map from your posts

TRM and other analyses make it clear: the main victims are high-net-worth, crypto-connected, and visible. Family is often used as leverage. (TRM Labs)

2. The Tactics

• Fake roles

  • Fake delivery driver in San Francisco. (The Independent)

  • Fake police or staged raids in other documented cases. (Yahoo)

• Home invasions/kidnappings

  • Dragging victims into vans in Paris. (TRM Labs)

  • Holding families hostage overnight in Minnesota. (MPR News)

  • Multi-week captivity in Manhattan for a Bitcoin password. (Reuters)

• “Deal gone wrong” meetups

  • India & Australia cases: crypto transaction disputes escalate into assaults, forced transfers, and long drives with threats. (The Times of India)

3. The Ticket Sizes

• Big-headline cases: $1.6M, $8M, $11M+

• Smaller, local cases: $5k–$50k trades that turned into kidnappings

• Netlok / Lopp / TRM-tracked incidents span that full range, but media obviously loves the “eight-figure” stories. (netlok.com)

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What This Means for Bitcoiners (a.k.a. You, Reading This on Your Phone)

You cannot completely “OPSEC” your way out of being on planet Earth with other humans. But you can massively reduce your risk. In addition, I have a good friend who provides professional physical security services for high net individuals and high profile people that might launch services soon, so stay tuned!

Think of your defenses in three layers:

1. Lifestyle OPSEC – Don’t Be the Main Character

• Stop posting screenshots of your stack.

• Stop telling strangers at bars you’re “early Bitcoin rich.”

• Kill obvious IRL flexes: vanity plates, front-yard BTC logos, conference selfies in front of your HQ sign.

• Assume attackers can connect: your real name → your company → your leaked email → your address → your social media.

If nobody can tell you’re a whale, it’s a lot harder to spearfish you.

2. Custody Design – Engineer Your Future “No”

Goal: Even at wrench-point, you literally can’t move everything.

For large holdings, consider:

• Multi-sig with geographically separated keys

  • Example: 2-of-3 with one key in a bank box or with a trusted service – something you can’t access instantly at home.

• Time-locked or delayed-withdrawal setups

  • Where large transfers trigger delays/alerts so you or a co-signer can intervene.

• Decoy wallets

  • A small, “looks big to a normie” hot wallet that you would plausibly unlock under duress so the attacker thinks they’ve cleaned you out.

Vendors like Casa, Ledger, Fireblocks, etc. are increasingly building around this “human is the weakest link” reality. (Casa Blog)

3. Physical Security – Boring but Non-Optional

• Cameras, good locks, no obvious package scams.

• Don’t let random “delivery people” into your home; meet them at the door.

• If you’re visibly wealthy and crypto-public, think: gated building, private mailbox, maybe even security patrols.

• Train yourself and family on “we do not talk about Bitcoin with strangers, ever.”

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Is This a Reason to Avoid Self-Custody?

Short answer: No. Long answer: Self-custody with zero OPSEC is cope.

• Centralized platforms have their own risks: hacks, freezes, KYC leaks, blacklists.

• But pure “metal seed on my nightstand, brag on X every day” is not the flex you think it is.

The 2025 story is not “self-custody is bad.”
The story is:

We finally have enough adoption and enough visible wealth that meat-space attacks scaled up. Now the culture needs to catch up.

You wouldn’t walk around flashing a bag with $11M in cash.
Don’t act like your seed phrase is different.

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Should I Be Terrified?

No. Be realistic.

Relative to the number of people holding crypto globally, wrench attacks are still:

• Low probability

• High impact

• Highly concentrated in:

  • rich

  • loud

  • poorly secured

If you’re stacking sats quietly, living a mostly normal life, and you:

• keep a low profile

• architect your custody so you can’t be forced to nuke your stack instantly

• and take basic physical precautions

…then your actual, practical risk is way lower than the news cycle makes it feel.

But if you are wealthy, public, and heavily self-custodied?
Yeah, 2025 is your wake-up call to design security like you’re living in the real world, not just on-chain.

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Question of the Day ❓

If someone mapped your online footprint right now – posts, selfies, company info, property records – how hard would it be to figure out you’re into Bitcoin and where you sleep?

And what’s one thing you’re willing to change this week to lower that signal?

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