Bangladesh, Oct. 10 -- France faces a disturbing surge in kidnappings, hostage-taking, and violent home invasions as organized criminal networks hunt cryptocurrency fortunes, increasingly targeting ordinary families alongside wealthy executives and influencers.

France is confronting a dangerous new dimension of organized crime: criminals are abandoning the keyboard for the crowbar, replacing digital fraud with physical terror to seize cryptocurrency fortunes.

A father beaten and forced into a car trunk. A magistrate and her mother held hostage for 30 hours. An entire family terrorized overnight by armed intruders demanding digital money. These are not scenes from a crime thriller. They are examples of an escalating wave of cryptocurrenc...