A recent home invasion in San Francisco’s Mission Dolores neighborhood saw a suspect posing as a delivery worker restrain a resident and make off with a phone, laptop, and approximately $11 million in bitcoin and other digital assets.
As of Sunday, no arrests or specific details about the stolen assets have been reported by local police.
Physical attacks on bitcoin holders are rising
This incident is part of a growing trend of physical attacks targeting bitcoin and digital asset owners globally.
Previous cases include a $4.3 million home invasion in the UK, a high-profile kidnapping in New York to extract bitcoin wallet keys, and similar crimes in France.
In response, some high-profile holders have adopted extreme operational security measures, such as splitting their seed phrases across continents.
Stolen funds quickly move on-chain
After such thefts, the stolen bitcoin and assets are often rapidly transferred across public blockchains, making tracing both possible and urgent.
The industry’s capacity to freeze tainted assets has increased, especially for stablecoins, with entities like the T3 Financial Crime Unit freezing hundreds of millions in criminal tokens since 2024.
Chainalysis data shows stablecoins accounted for 63% of illicit transaction volume in 2024, with issuers and exchanges now playing a vital role in potential asset recovery.
Regulatory and technical responses
California’s Digital Financial Assets Law, enacted in July 2025, strengthens oversight of exchanges and custodians, potentially aiding in tracking stolen bitcoin if thieves attempt fiat off-ramps.
Wallet security has also evolved, with multi-party computation and account-abstraction wallets introducing time locks and multi-factor approvals to reduce single-point failures during physical attacks.
What comes next
The next phase depends on whether destination addresses become public and if stablecoin issuers or exchanges act to freeze stolen assets.
As physical and cyber threats converge, the importance of robust bitcoin security and regulatory frameworks continues to grow.
