Again. An English crypto trader claims he was tied up and threatened with a knife in his own home and then robbed of the equivalent of $800,000. Known on X under the nickname “realist”, he recounted the scene on the night of October 12 to 13.
This scenario has had a name in France for two years: crypto-kidnapping. The United Kingdom is discovering that it is not immune.
An $800,000 crypto homejacking in the middle of the night
The trader recounted his attack on X in two publications. The first falls around 3:10 a.m. (Paris time), October 13, 2026, in a blunt tone: “If you live in the UK and you do crypto, get out”. He explains that he was duct-taped and held at knifepoint at his home. In the second, published a quarter of an hour later, he specifies that his attackers brandished three knives under his nose and promised to kill him.
According to his count, the loot reached $40,000 taken from his main wallets and $720,000 emptied from one of his Ledgers. A Rolex is added to the bill. The Ledger, precisely? It’s a physical wallet that keeps your private keys offline. It protects your funds from hackers who operate remotely, but no box can stand up to someone forcing you to enter your PIN. The robbers then smashed his phone.
The trader says he got away with a few bruises. He assures that the police are on site and that his entire house has become a crime scene. No British police force had communicated on the case at the time of writing. Neither the city nor the identity of the victim is known. The trader, however, published the Solana address of the wallet which would have received part of the stolen funds. On the Solscan explorer, it is now renamed “Fake_Phishing4516” and accompanied by a warning linking it to home-jacking. The thieves did not hang around. Around 3:20 a.m. (Paris time), around ten minutes after the trader's publication, 346 SOL were distributed in two transfers of 20 and 326 SOL, or approximately $37,000 at the day's rate. The wallet only contains crumbs.
“If you live in the UK and invest in cryptocurrencies, run! My house was just broken into: they barricaded everything, threatened me with a knife and stole $800,000. I'm so shocked that I don't know what to do anymore. This country is a real plague. No, it's not a joke, I really wish it were. Wallet with stolen funds. »
The United Kingdom caught by wrench attacks
The Anglo-Saxons call it a “wrench attack”. The phrase comes from a drawing in the webcomic xkcd where a thief forgoes breaking a sophisticated cipher and simply hits the holder with a $5 wrench until he gets his password. The drawing dates from February 2009, when bitcoin didn't even have a price yet.
The country has already experienced a chilling crypto homejacking. On December 13, 2025 at around 5:20 p.m., three men in their twenties forced the door of a couple in Solihull, in the West Midlands. They threatened the pregnant young woman with knives until the couple transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds in crypto. A fourth accomplice dictated the instructions by video. Nine months later, Crimestoppers is offering up to £10,000 to anyone who secures a conviction. West Midlands Police have still not found the perpetrators.
The Gart.io site, which lists these attacks, counts 27 attacks in the United Kingdom since the start of the year. Globally, the register kept by bitcoin developer Jameson Lopp counted around 70 physical attacks in 2025, compared to 41 in 2024. The previous record dated from 2021, with 36 cases.
France remains the capital of crypto-kidnapping
The English trader's advice has an obvious limit. Fleeing England for France would be like falling from Charybdis to Scylla. The Ministry of the Interior identified 90 crypto-related cases between January 1 and mid-August 2026, according to Cointelegraph. Kidnappings, kidnappings, extortion and violent thefts appear pell-mell. That's a file every two and a half days.
The National Anti-Organized Crime Prosecutor's Office (Pnaco) already reported 88 indictments in the spring, including more than ten minors. And the modus operandi of crypto home-jacking is traveling from one country to another without changing costumes. Often very young performers are recruited online, while the sponsors stay far from the stage. The video order giver from Solihull fits perfectly with the pattern observed in France.
There remains the cruelest admission of the “realist” message. “You always hear about these stories, but you never think it will happen to you,” he writes.
