Thames Valley police said they were seeking witnesses who may have seen the four raiders who broke into the house in the picturesque Oxfordshire village of Moulsford, and threatened the trader and his partner. But they would not confirm local reports that the target of the raiders was not physical property but the man’s stock of the cryptocurrency.

The soaring value of the online currency was the subject of much discussion at Davos in the past week, with politicians warning of clampdowns on tradingbecause of its association with criminality. 

Police said nobody had been seriously hurt in what they described as “a targeted incident”. They were called to the house off Reading Road at about 9.40am on 22 January and officers later visited a nearby school as a precaution.

Police said the investigation was in its early stages and warned local residents to expect an increased police presence. The village has many large, expensive redbrick houses, and has been used as a setting in several episodes of the TV detective drama Midsomer Murders.

They are particularly interested in anyone with mobile phone images, or dashcam footage from motorists driving through the village on the A329 road, at around the time of the incident.

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