Community and vendor datasets report about 50 to 60 wrench attacks on cryptocurrency holders in 2025, nearly double the 2024 count and part of more than 215 physical incidents logged since 2020. Analysts monitoring forums, local news, and police blotters state the true count is higher because many victims decline to disclose wallet or exchange details. Attackers combine public blockchain data, leaked personal information, and social media signals to map holdings to real names and addresses. Attack methods include fake deliveries, utility pretexts, staged yard checks, impersonation to gain entry, on‑site testing of small transfers followed by escalation, restraint, threats, and forced account access. Incidents cluster around cryptocurrency price movements and data spills. Organized crews outsource enforcement to local proxies, use rented housing for staging, rotate vehicles and prepaid phones, and coordinate remotely to validate balances and direct exits. A San Francisco case involved a gunman posing as a delivery driver, restraint of the resident, accomplice verification of balances by phone, staged transfers over roughly 90 minutes, and an estimated $11 million loss. Reports also document retirees coerced in Florida, torture and threats in Texas over believed hardware wallets, and threats against family members in Europe and Brazil. Underreporting occurs because victims fear reputational damage, expect mishandling of crypto evidence by police, or view losses as irreversible, and law enforcement records often list generic robbery charges without on‑chain details. Improved case reporting with structured incident fields would enable better detection, trend analysis, and linkage across incidents. Defensive measures for individuals and teams include reducing public signals that link wallets to identities or addresses, scrubbing leaked personal data, protecting family information, improving home perimeter security and delivery verification, adopting multisignature custody with geographically and role‑separated signers, storing hardware wallets and seed backups offsite, implementing policy‑based custody with offsite cosigners and time locks, and separating signing workstations from everyday devices. Post‑incident actions include calling law enforcement immediately, providing wallet addresses and transaction hashes, preserving device logs and camera footage, notifying exchanges and analytics firms to trace and flag funds, and coordinating insurers and legal counsel through a single point of contact. Metrics to monitor include incident counts from community databases, arrest and conviction rates, share of cases tied to leaked personal data, time from incident to first custodial or exchange touch, and percent of losses that interact with services where freezes are possible. Organizations should test response playbooks with red‑team drills that assume in‑person coercion, and insurers increasingly require proof of multisig separation and documented privacy controls. Law enforcement and exchanges are developing playbooks to handle on‑chain evidence and coordinated responses, and available reporting indicates attackers can execute physical coercion with basic wallet skills and access to leaked data. 

Source: https://web3businessnews.com/crypto/wrench-attacks-crypto-2025/

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