Crypto CEO Security Costs Surge as Physical Attacks Rise 75%

Coinbase reportedly spent roughly $7.6 million on private safety for CEO Brian Armstrong in 2025, a greater than 20% improve from the yr earlier than.

This is based on the corporate’s proxy filings cited in a report by Bloomberg, with the spending coming after bodily assaults on crypto holders rose 75% final yr. Per information from blockchain safety agency CertiK, there have been 72 confirmed incidents and $41 million in recognized losses.

Crypto Firms Tighten Security After Wave of Violent Attacks

That $7.6 million determine stated within the Bloomberg piece exceeds what main Wall Street banks usually disclose for CEO safety. For context, Gemini reportedly spent round $2.5 million on safety for the 2 co-founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, in 2025 and has since signed a deal to guard the twins and their households for $400,000 per 30 days.

Circle spent almost $800,000 on its CEO, Jeremy Allaire, in 2024, whereas Robinhood spent roughly $1.6 million on Vlad Tenev. The remainder of the trade response will be noticed somewhere else as effectively. For instance, in the course of the Bitcoin 2026 convention in Las Vegas simply final month, high-profile audio system could possibly be seen strolling round with private bodyguards.

And to point out how severely the neighborhood is taking safety, a workshop led by Bitcoin safety knowledgeable Ben Perrin that taught attendees find out how to shield their digital belongings below bodily coercion, as effectively as find out how to use decoy wallets, time-lock mechanisms, and duress options on {hardware} wallets, was some of the closely attended on the convention.

It was the identical a couple of weeks earlier at Paris Blockchain Week, the place visitors have been escorted by a police motorcade to a VIP dinner whereas organizers doubled safety across the occasion.

The risk could be very actual, as seen when a crypto holder recognized on-line as Sillytuna reported in March that armed attackers stole round $24 million in tokens after bodily intimidating him and threatening him with kidnapping and sexual assault.

The Structural Problem Beneath the Headlines

The cause why crypto homeowners are so susceptible boils all the way down to the expertise itself. As we all know, public blockchains are pseudonymous and never nameless, thus revealing possession data for anybody with correct analytical instruments to view. As such, leaked alternate information and chain analytics have collectively created, as Bloomberg put it, “a legible map of who holds what.”

For that cause, demand for defense providers has responded accordingly. Executive Risk Services, a agency centered on the digital-asset trade, went from receiving consumer inquiries roughly as soon as per quarter two years in the past to about as soon as every week now.

Meanwhile, Amsterdam-based Infinite Risks International, which gives bodyguards, armored automobiles, and social media monitoring to crypto holders, has seen extra inquiries, extra long-term shoppers, and extra proactive requests, based on managing director Jethro Pijlman. According to the report, France has change into a hotspot for crypto crime after a string of attacks on crypto entrepreneurs and their households.

Things have gotten so dangerous that final yr, the nation’s Interior Minister promised to establish a precedence emergency quantity for the trade, with elite police items providing safety briefings for crypto executives and their households.

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