French authorities count 90 crypto-related crimes in seven months

French authorities have logged 90 crypto-related cases of kidnapping, extortion, threats and theft over a span of seven months. That is a lot of crime aimed at people whose main offense was owning digital assets. The common thread is not some clever hack of a blockchain. It is data breaches that expose who victims are and where they can be found. The weak point in self-custody, it turns out, is the person holding the keys. The numbers behind the surge There were 77 reported cases of violent crimes against people involved with crypto in the first half of 2026. That compares with 45 incidents across the whole of 2025. Figures from the Parquet national anti-criminalité organisée (Pnaco) and Chainalysis show more than 70 such incidents documented by June 2026. Pnaco is France’s national prosecutor’s office focused on organized crime, which tells you how seriously the state is treating this. France recorded 19 public incidents of violent attacks on crypto holders in 2025. That figure climbed to 30 in the first half of 2026 alone. Attacks ran at roughly 1.9 per month in 2025 and rose to about 4.6 per month in early 2026. Reported global thefts linked to these incidents topped $30 million...