Analyst Claims $112.5 Million Stolen

The on-chain sleuth ZachXBT has reported that the scammers have stolen approximately 213 million XRP worth $112.5 million from Ripple.

The crypto community has been taken aback following a hack involving Ripple CEO’s XRP tokens.

Ripple CEO Involved Law Enforcement Agencies to Investigate XRP Theft

The screenshot below shows the flow of stolen XRP tokens.

“So far the stolen funds have been laundered through MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, HitBTC, etc,” ZachXBT said.

Read more: Who Is ZachXBT, the Crypto Sleuth Exposing Scams?

Meanwhile, Chris Larsen, the CEO of Ripple, confirmed the incident. However, he clarified that Ripple’s wallets remain secure, but his personal XRP wallets were compromised.

“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,” said Larsen.

Following ZachXBT’s reports about Ripple’s hack, the price of XRP tokens fell by 3.5%. However, as of writing, the price has almost recovered.

Read more: 15 Most Common Crypto Scams To Look Out For

This incident will effectively become the largest security breach of 2024. Prior to the Ripple hack, the crypto industry had already lost over $77 million to exploits and scams in January 2024, according to the Web3 security firm CertiK.

“This represents a ~135% increase from the same time period last year with phishing attacks making up ~$29 million. The amount of incidents has also increased by roughly 30% compared to January 2023,” CertiK told BeInCrypto