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$11 Million Crypto Theft in Broad Daylight Is Latest in Increasingly Common $5 Wrench Attacks

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In the quiet bustle of a San Francisco morning, a routine knock on the door soon turned into a nightmare of coercion and irreversible harm when a man who presented himself as a harmless delivery driver entered a home in the Mission Dolores neighborhood through the simple ploy of requesting a signature to receive a package.

This was followed by brazenly pointing a gun, tying up the resident with duct tape and making demands that included unlocking access to $11 million worth of crypto assets. The victim is known only as Joshua Initial report from San Francisco ChronicleSome survived with unknown injuries, while the thief disappeared.

A comic describing the expectation versus reality of a crypto hack.
© XKCD

While remote crypto hacks are common over the Internet, this was a more disturbing and physical home invasion aimed at theft. The victim, described by Y Combinator’s Gary Tan to a friend in an X post, becomes the latest example of a vulnerability that has long troubled self-custody enthusiasts in crypto: the so-called $5 wrench attack.

Tan originally raised the alarm regarding the attack on X, sharing security footage of the suspect arriving at the house posing as a fake delivery person. However, Tan has removed the post from his timeline.

Joshua is not alone, as such incidents have been appearing with worrying frequency in the media recently. Jameson Lopes, co-founder and chief security officer of Casa, has been mapping this increase in physical attacks on crypto users for quite some time. Drawing from a collection of media clippings built over the years, Lope’s data shows a massive increase in kidnappings, home invasions and outright kidnappings for the purpose of crypto theft across the globe.

In a presentation at the Bitcoin 2025 conference earlier this year, Lope explained: This year is headed toward a record number of these types of events, as reports related to this type of activity track the price of Bitcoin itself. Lop also pointed out An investigation conducted by the University of Cambridge This suggests the situation may be worse than their own figures suggest.

The allure of this type of crime is simple. Unlike traditional dollars or other fiat currencies held in a bank vault, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are transferred instantly without any take-back (apart from exceptions). Centrally controlled digital assets like stable coins which are subject to blacklisting and confiscation).

Now! a week ago in bangkokA 35-year-old Chinese national headed towards a taxi on Mahaseth Road, but was pulled over in a sedan by a trio of attackers. Punches were thrown, then brutally rounded up in an underground den where punches and threats led to the robbery of 50,000 baht in cash along with 9,375 USDT, a stablecoin commonly known as Tether. The victim, bleeding and broken, acquiesced under pressure; However, authorities later caught the attackers at airports and condos and charged them with charges ranging from robbery to false imprisonment.

Across the Pacific Ocean in British Columbia, one family’s ordeal escalates 13 hours of agonyTheir doorstep was instigated by fraudsters in postal uniform. What started as a show-off delivery turned into a beating and binding, culminating in the forced transfer of $2 million in digital assets. The perpetrator of the attack was recently arrested, but others involved in the attack are still at large.

Recently another attack took place in Oxfordshire, EnglandWhere five men traveling in a rural area between Kidlington and Yarnton encountered a group of masked intruders in their vehicle. In the incident that lasted more than 30 minutes, the attackers made away with a £448,000 Rolex, mobile devices, and forced a captive to send £1.1 million in cryptocurrency to an unknown wallet address.

Lope has used his expertise to strengthen these fronts at Casa, where multisignature vaults and inheritance protocols are used to scatter private keys among trusted custodians, protecting against a central single point of failure for a $5 wrench attack. While such attacks, already occurring in large numbers, are undoubtedly troubling, Lope has told These are still rookie times, and such attacks may become more sophisticated and professional over time.

Of course, in the shadow of these headlines, another quiet crypto exodus has emerged. Why tempt fate with hardware wallets and homespun setups when exchanges or spot ETFs offer custody of these assets?

Platforms like Coinbase or BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust absorb the security burden for users, as long as individual private keys are entrusted to these third-party custodians. This is a practical option for many, but it also runs contrary to the original vision of Bitcoin as a rebellion against centralized financial gatekeepers.

In trading autonomy for ease, holders gain peace of mind but lose the radical self-reliance that once defined the movement. But as wrench attacks increase, crypto users should ensure they do not become an isolated point of centralized failure and think about the potential physical diversification of private keys associated with their funds.





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