Jean-Didier Berger and Michael Amar in Conversation at Paris Blockchain Week 2026

At Paris Blockchain Week 2026, one of the most consequential conversations was not about tokenization, price action, or the future of Web3. It was about something far less abstract: what happens when digital wealth creates physical risk — and how the state intends to respond. 

At Paris Blockchain Week 2026, one of the sharpest conversations on stage was about fear, exposure, and the cost of visibility. In the Fireside Chat with Jean-Didier Berger, Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Interior, Paris Blockchain Week Chairman Michael Amar brought the discussion to a point the industry can no longer afford to sidestep: crypto’s risks are no longer merely financial or technological. They are increasingly physical. 

That, in many ways, was the real message of the session. Crypto has matured. So have the threats around it.

France has worked hard to position itself as one of the world’s most attractive jurisdictions for digital assets. But recent events have made clear that legitimacy comes with a price. Since 2025, a series of kidnappings and physical assaults targeting members of the crypto ecosystem has forced a new kind of reckoning.

Michael Amar framed the issue directly, referring to attacks that made national headlines and changed the tone of the conversation around the sector. 

Jean-Didier Berger did not hide behind bureaucratic language. His response was blunt and politically significant: 

“We take this very, very seriously.” 

It was the defining line of the exchange — because it marked a shift. This was no longer being treated as a niche problem affecting a niche industry. It had become a matter of internal security. 

What made Berger’s remarks especially striking was the emphasis on speed. According to him, just three days after the events of May 13, 2025, a major meeting was convened around the Minister of the Interior to define three axes of action: prevention, training, and a rapid alert system so that law enforcement could intervene immediately when something happened. 

This is the new language of the state in relation to crypto: not fascination, not distance, but risk management.

Berger backed that language with numbers. 466 individuals were registered on an emergency call platform so that those under threat could receive priority treatment from law enforcement as soon as an incident occurred. In addition, nearly 400 people received security briefings from France’s elite units — GIGN, RAID, and BRI. 

These figures mattered. They turned the government’s position from rhetorical reassurance into something more concrete: the beginning of a security architecture around a sector that has become too visible, too valuable, and too exposed to be left to fend for itself.

And visibility, in fact, was one of the central themes of the session. Because the vulnerability of crypto today does not stem only from wealth itself, but from data. Berger acknowledged this point directly, warning that 

“the abundance of data available on platforms means that you are particularly exposed” ; especially in an environment where organized crime and cybercrime are becoming increasingly porous. 

This may be the most important shift in the entire conversation. Crypto once sold itself on the promise of autonomy, discretion, and decentralization. But maturity has brought platforms, identification, transaction trails, and public visibility. In other words, the industry that once celebrated independence is now learning the hard truth of exposure.

Berger said France had strengthened cooperation with platforms and industry participants and had also taken measures, including through a decree mentioned in the discussion, to better protect personal data and conceal addresses. The message was clear: safeguarding digital assets can no longer be separated from safeguarding the people behind them. 

The legal dimension of the conversation was equally telling. Berger noted that the newly established National Organized Crime Prosecution Office had taken on several cases linked to the crypto ecosystem and stated that since January, authorities had already identified 230 cases in this area. That number cuts through any temptation to dismiss the issue as anecdotal. What is emerging is not a string of isolated incidents, but a pattern serious enough to trigger an institutional response. 

The second half of the discussion was clearly aimed at restoring confidence. Could France remain one of Europe’s leading destinations for Web3 investment while acknowledging that the sector now carries real-world security risks? Berger’s answer was effectively a political pitch. France, he said, has spent more than a decade working to become one of the most attractive countries for these investments, with measures for infrastructure, security, and business support among the strongest in the European Union. He added that for the sixth consecutive year, France was in 2025 the most attractive country in Europe for investment, and that Choose France 2025 represented more than €41 billion in investment and 53 announced projects. 

Still, the strongest line came near the end: 

“Instability creates uncertainty, and uncertainty is not good for business. But in France there is freedom, there is stability, there is predictability.”

That sentence captured the essence of the session. France is not trying to argue that crypto carries no danger. It is trying to argue something more credible: that in a world of volatility, some states are willing to offer protection.

That is a more mature promise. And perhaps the only one that now matters.

Paris Blockchain Week 2026 may have been designed as a celebration of innovation. But one of its clearest conclusions was harsher than the industry may once have liked to admit: crypto’s next major test is not technological. It is institutional. It is physical. And it is already here.