The French National Assembly's Finance Committee adopted amendment I-CF821 on Friday, a provision that would require crypto holders to declare self-custody wallet balances of €100,000 ($112,000) or more, with fines up to €10,000 ($11,000) for non-compliance. The measure is not yet law. The committee rejected the budget's entire revenue section by 31 votes to 3, meaning the full National Assembly starts Monday from the government's original text, which contains none of the crypto amendments. Any lawmaker who wants them back must table them again.

The amendment would insert a provision into France's general tax code obliging individuals to report crypto assets held in self-custody wallets, valued at the end of the calendar year. Self-custody means the owner controls the private keys directly, without an intermediary such as a centralized exchange. The committee justified the measure as a tool against fraud, arguing that crypto ownership in France is currently underestimated.

That claim lacks a published methodology. The amendment text does not explain how the finance ministry arrived at its underestimate figure, nor how the declaration database would be secured against leakage.

Why holders say disclosure invites physical risk?

Industry figures responded with unusually blunt warnings. Harry Halpin, CEO of privacy infrastructure firm Nym, told Decrypt: "This is a terrible idea as corrupt employees in the French tax authority have already shown themselves to be a danger to their own citizens." He referenced a recent case in which a French tax agent stood accused of selling tax authority data to criminals. Halpin added that "in the future, criminals will use chain analytics and other AI surveillance," and argued the only defense is shielded currencies such as Zcash and private VPNs.

Rand Hindi, founder of privacy protocol Zama, went further: "If you live in France and hold crypto, leave. If you can't leave, hire personal security for you and your family." Hindi's post has circulated widely as a shorthand for the industry's security objection.

Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, a Solana-based infrastructure firm, framed the data-risk arithmetic starkly: "France is the leading country on the planet for crypto kidnappings and wrench attacks. Now they want to increase by 50,000x the amount of data they collect and hence leak."

The core objection is operational, not ideological. A centralized register of large wallet balances creates a single point of failure; one compromised insider could convert tax records into target lists.

What is the crime context?

France has recorded a series of violent, in-person attacks on crypto holders in recent years:

• In 2025, Ledger co-founder David Balland and his wife were kidnapped from their home and held for ransom; attackers severed one of Balland's fingers.
• Earlier this year, the wife of Sébastien Borget, co-founder of The Sandbox, survived an attempted kidnapping at her home in Villenoy, Seine-et-Marne.
• Also this year, a couple in their late 50s in Versailles were forced at knifepoint by robbers posing as police to transfer $1 million in Bitcoin.

These cases explain why many holders view mandatory disclosure as an attack-surface expansion rather than a compliance formality. The amendment text does not address how declared data would be protected.

What else did the committee approve?

Two further crypto measures passed the same session. Crypto-to-stablecoin swaps would be treated as taxable sales from January 2027, closing a deferral loophole. France's exit tax would also extend to crypto held by households worth more than €800,000, aligning digital assets with existing rules on expatriating wealth.

Both measures share the same procedural status as the wallet rule: adopted in committee, then nullified by the rejection of the revenue section. The stablecoin provision, if revived and passed, would take effect at the start of 2027, giving intermediaries roughly a year to build reporting rails.

The floor debate resumes Monday. Whether any of these provisions survive depends on lawmakers re-tabling them against a text that currently omits every one.