On Tuesday, approximately $112 million worth of the XRP cryptocurrency, which is centered around Ripple, was pilfered by hackers from a crypto wallet, as revealed by Ripple's co-founder and executive chairman, Chris Larsen.
Larsen disclosed on Wednesday that the stolen cryptocurrency belonged to him. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Larsen mentioned that unauthorized access occurred in some of his personal XRP accounts, distinct from Ripple. He assured that the problem was swiftly identified, and exchanges were notified to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement has also been engaged in the matter.
The announcement came less than an hour after crypto security researcher ZachXBT reported the hack on X. According to ZachXBT, the pilfered XRP funds had already been laundered through various crypto exchanges like Binance and Kraken. Binance acknowledged the incident, stating that they are actively supporting the investigation, and Kraken emphasized their proactive review to prevent their platform from being misused.
However, there is ambiguity regarding the ownership of the hacked wallet, whether it is linked to Ripple or not. XRPScan's on-chain data revealed that the compromised wallet was labeled "Ripple (50)" and was activated by another wallet called "~FundingWallet1" on November 5, 2018. Larsen's account activated ~FundingWallet1 on February 6, 2013, shortly after his own account, ~chrislarsen, was created.
When approached for comment, Ripple's spokesperson referred to Larsen's post and clarified that Ripple itself was not impacted. Ripple, established in 2012, aspires to be a payments and enterprise infrastructure provider, consisting of a network, protocol, and decentralized public ledger known as XRP Ledger. The value of XRP, the network's token, dropped by approximately 4% on the day of the hack.
In response to the incident, some XRP holders are urging the co-founders to disclose their crypto wallets and XRP holdings to enhance transparency. Meanwhile, others, including Thinking Crypto podcast host Tony Edward, are urging Larsen to distance himself from Ripple.
This cyber attack stands out as the most significant cryptocurrency theft in 2024 and ranks as the twentieth largest in recorded history, based on data compiled by Rekt, a website monitoring web3 and crypto breaches. In the previous year, hackers targeted approximately $2 billion in cryptocurrency, as reported by crypto security firms specializing in tracking such incidents.