Crypto home invasions jump 20x as wrench-attack exposure hits $124 million

CertiK tracked just one crypto-related home invasion in the first half of 2025. A year later, its publicly verifiable tally had surged 20-fold.Physical-coercion crimes, often called wrench attacks, bypass digital defenses by threatening a holder or relative until someone surrenders access or moves funds. The change turns a crime statistic into a custody-design problem: a secure key is not enough if one frightened person can release all the value immediately.In CertiK's H1 2026 wrench-attack report, released July 23, across all attack types, the security firm counted 52 verified incidents, up 33.3% from 39 a year earlier. It recorded roughly $124.1 million in financial exposure from losses and ransom demands, compared with about $10.5 million in H1 2025, an 11.8-fold increase.Within the dataset, Europe accounted for 39 cases and France for 33, a clear concentration in the visible record.Custody has to survive coercionA hardware wallet or offline seed phrase can still be bypassed as a sole safeguard when a holder is forced to unlock a wallet, reveal recovery material, or authorize a transaction. The first priority is therefore to eliminate unilateral authority over significant funds....