Following reports by ZachXBT on X that 213 million $XRP tokens valued at $112.5 million were stolen and laundered through exchanges like MEXC, Binance, Kraken, and OKX, the price of $XRP experienced a significant drop of more than 5%, now trading below the $0.5 mark.
It appears @Ripple was hacked for ~213M XRP ($112.5M)
Source address
rJNLz3A1qPKfWCtJLPhmMZAfBkutC2QojmSo 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
Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, confirmed the theft, clarifying that the tokens were taken from his personal accounts rather than Ripple’s.
Larsen assured that they swiftly detected the issue and informed exchanges to freeze the affected addresses, with law enforcement already involved.
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
$XRP Price Action Following The News
After Wednesday’s decline, XRP Ledger fell below the $0.50 market value for the first time since October 19th.
Following this news, #XRP Dropped to $0.48, Levels Last Seen In October 2023 https://t.co/PwUuzGjIDa
— CoinEcho (@mycoinecho) January 31, 2024
However, despite the setback, yesterday recorded the highest number of $XRP $1M+ whale transactions on the network (217) since prices surged after a judge’s ruling that Ripple did not violate securities laws on July 13th and 14th.
🐳 After an #altcoin slide Wednesday, #XRPLedger is at risk of falling below a $0.50 market value for the first time since October 19th. Interestingly, however, yesterday had the most $XRP $1M+ whale transactions on the network (217) since prices skyrocketed after a
(Cont) 👇 pic.twitter.com/1xa0PHCzcb
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 31, 2024
Moreover, there appears to be no panic among XRP whales. Wallets holding at least 10M $XRP now account for 67.2% of the available supply, the highest since December 31, 2022.
These signals suggest that the #6 market cap asset could be primed for a rebound, provided Bitcoin stabilizes throughout the week.
Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any Metaverse crypto coins.