Unchained published a new educational guide on “wrench attacks,” the term for physical coercion used to force a victim to hand over bitcoin keys.

The firm frames the issue as a security consideration for anyone treating bitcoin as a bearer asset and holding it directly.

How common are they?

Unchained points to Jameson Lopp’s long-running dataset and a 2024 academic paper by Ordekian et al. as key sources.

Lopp argued in May 2025 that the risk is often misweighted versus more common failure modes.

He said:

“It’s important to put this all in context. Wrench attacks are probably the rarest type of attack that happens in this space. […] There are many, many, greater, more common threats that you should be worried about long before you start worrying about the wrench attack.”

Unchained notes Lopp’s list has “over 250 documented cases” of physical attacks since 2014, while also warning incidents may be underreported.

Three prevention levers

First, Unchained recommends limiting who knows you own bitcoin, including avoiding obvious signaling like branded clothing or public in-person transactions.

Second, it recommends obscuring balances and access paths, including avoiding discussing holdings and making keys harder to reach.

Third, it emphasizes baseline security and privacy measures, from home security to stronger digital authentication.

“Getting serious” about custody

Unchained argues:

“The best tool to safely guard bitcoin against theft is a multisig wallet.”

A multisig wallet creates geographically distributed keys so a single compromised location can’t drain funds.

For more details and the full list of recommendations, read Unchained’s original piece: https://www.unchained.com/blog/wrench-attacks