Violent wrench attacks against wealthy crypto holders have spiked in the first four months of 2026, with more than $101 million stolen. Europe leads the way with this type of theft, with France the epicenter of these attacks. Of the 34 wrench attacks documented by crypto security firm CertiK so far this year, 28 were in Europe and 24 in France. If the trend continues, CertiK said the total could reach 130 incidents this year, compared to 81 with a total of $52 million stolen in 2025. Wrench attacks generally consist of home invasions or kidnappings in which violence or the threat of violence is used to force victims to…
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Bitcoin Quantum Theft Freeze Proposal Draws Alternatives
BitMEX suggest canary in a coal mine approach
A controversial proposal to freeze older, dormant bitcoins to prevent them from being stolen by quantum computing attacks is generating a great deal of pushback, with several prominent sources suggesting alternatives. About 1.7 billion dormant bitcoins are locked using old encryption protocols that make them exceptionally vulnerable to theft by quantum computers, which will be powerful enough to break bitcoin’s encryption by brute force. Beyond that, 34% of the total bitcoin supply has an exposed public key that will be vulnerable to quantum threats unless transferred to new wallet addresses. A proposal yesterday by prominent bitcoin developers, including Jameson Lopp, suggested a three-stage freeze of older bitcoins over five years,…
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Proposal Would Freeze Bitcoins to Protect Against Quantum Theft
Quantum computers could break bitcoin encryption
A new proposal from five prominent Bitcoin developers would freeze coins in order to protect them from attacks by quantum computers, which are expected to be strong enough to break Bitcoin’s encryption and allow the theft of dormant tokens. Some 1.7 billion dormant bitcoins are locked using old encryption protocols that make them exceptionally vulnerable to quantum theft. That includes Satoshi Nakamoto’s 1.1 million bitcoin stash. The “Post Quantum Migration and Legacy Signature Sunset” proposal, or BIP-361, would have three stages. First, bitcoins would be sendable only to post-quantum secure addresses. That would take place about three years after BIP-361 goes live. Two years later, the second phase would freeze…
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KuCoin CEO Johnny Liu's 2020 would have been a lot worse if not for helpful competitors and good insurance (Photo: KuCoin)KuCoin hack’s $285M recovered or insured: CEO Johnny Lyu
The exchange’s CEO said that all but $44.5 million worth of the stolen crypto was retrieved with help from other exchanges; otherwise it was a great year
According to an open letter by CEO Johnny Lyu, a collaboration between KuCoin, its partners and other cryptocurrency exchanges allowed the firm to recover 78% of the losses—equivalent to $222 million—while cooperation with law enforcement allowed the company to retrieve a further 6%, or $17.45 million.
