Ripple co-founder's personal wallets hacked, $112 million XRP stolen

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Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen confirmed today that 213 million XRP tokens, worth over $112 million, were drained from his personal wallets. He added that the case is under investigation.

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. https://t.co/T3HtKSlzLg

— Chris Larsen (@chrislarsensf) January 31, 2024

This confirmation was a direct response to doubts raised by ZachXBT, a well-known on-chain sleuth. ZachXBT earlier suspected that approximately 213 million XRP tokens, valued at around $112 million, might have been illicitly extracted from Ripple. The suspected wallet address, rJNLz3A1qPKfWCtJLPhmMZAfBkutC2Qojm, reportedly executed the hack and distributed the stolen funds across eight different wallets.

It appears @Ripple was hacked for ~213M XRP ($112.5M)

Source address
rJNLz3A1qPKfWCtJLPhmMZAfBkutC2Qojm

So far the stolen funds have been laundered through MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, HitBTC, etc pic.twitter.com/HKGYsLQeMv

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 31, 2024

The stolen XRP has already been tracked moving through various cryptocurrency exchanges, including MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, and HitBTC, as per ZachXBT’s findings.

This incident follows closely on the heels of a failed hacking attempt on Bitfinex earlier this month. Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Bitfinex, reported that $15 billion worth of XRP, equivalent to nearly half the total XRP in circulation, was moved to Bitfinex on January 15. He revealed that these were part of a concerted effort to exploit a data vulnerability in the Bitfinex system.

XRP was down below $0.5 shortly after speculation surfaced, according to data from CoinGecko.

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