A hacker has cracked Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen’s personal wallets, reportedly stealing more than $117 million worth of XRP.
Larsen acknowledged the hack on the social media platform X.
“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.
This is an isolated incident, and Ripple wallets are secure/were never compromised. We’ve confirmed nearly all the affected funds were converted out of XRP.
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.”
Larsen posted on X in response to a tweet from the pseudonymous on-chain researcher ZachXBT, who said Ripple the company had been hacked for approximately 213 million XRP worth $112.5 million.
Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse referred to ZachXBT’s post as “irresponsible speculation and reporting” and doubled down on Larsen’s statement, noting that none of the company’s addresses were impacted.
Crypto tracker Lookonchain noted on Thursday that the hacker hit four of Larsen’s wallets, looting a total of 237.68 million XRP worth $117.4 million. The hacker reportedly transferred 212.68 million XRP worth $105 million to exchanges.
XRP is trading around $0.505 at time of writing. The 7th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up nearly 2% in the past 24 hours.
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