Ripple, Binance stress that the affected wallets belonged to Chris Larsen’s private accounts and have nothing to do with Ripple
San Francisco, February 7, 2024 – The value of XRP, the cryptocurrency associated with payments company Ripple, experienced a notable decline following news that co-founder Chris Larsen’s private crypto wallets were breached on Tuesday, January 30. 1 It should be noted that the wallets belong to Chris Larsen and not Ripple’s.
The breach resulted in the theft of about 213 XRP tokens.
Reports said that the stolen funds were quickly laundered through various prominent cryptocurrency exchanges. 2
While Ripple itself confirmed no system compromise, the incident raised security concerns and potentially impacted investor confidence, driving the price down.
“Yesterday, there was unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts (not @Ripple) – we were quickly able to catch the problem and notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved,” Chris Larsen posted on X following the incident.
He also stressed that this was an isolated incident.
“We’re working with law enforcement and have been advised that a significant portion of funds have been frozen, and are pursuing the remainder aggressively. Many thanks to @XRPLF @Silkjaer for their help.” He said in the post.
Larsen thus clarified that the attack targeted his private accounts, not Ripple’s internal systems.
Exchanges were promptly notified to freeze the affected wallet addresses, and law enforcement is investigating the matter.
This development comes amidst ongoing legal battles between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding XRP’s classification as a security.
While authorities work to trace transactions and freeze linked accounts, including $4.2 million frozen by Binance. Binance CEO Richard Teng on Thursday, February 1, the freezing of multiple accounts holding 8.3 million XRP coins, worth $4.2 million, and pledged collaboration with Ripple and other entities for a comprehensive recovery effort. 3
Multiple reports said that cybercriminals have used a new way to obfuscate the trail, and hence the tracing was a challenge. One report said that the criminal activity took about 10 hours.
- XRP Dip: https://twitter.com/chrislarsensf/status/1752742706462523882[↩]
- XRP Dip: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/ripple-xrp-hack%3A-binance-seizes-stolen-funds-worth-%244.2m[↩]
- XRP Dip: https://twitter.com/_RichardTeng/status/[↩]
