Ripple chief executive officer (CEO) Brad Garlinghouse has reiterated that XRP wallets managed by the San Francisco-headquartered crypto solutions company are safe and secure.
The pseudonymous blockchain detective ZachXBT took to X on Wednesday to announce a hack incident, involving the theft of an estimated 213 million XRP tokens. These tokens were worth about $112.5 million at the time of the tweet.
In the update, ZachXBT speculated that the stolen XRP tokens belonged to the cross-border payment firm Ripple. “It appears Ripple was hacked […]” he wrote, attaching the compromised address. He added that the hacker utilized MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, HitBTC and other exchanges to launder the stolen crypto assets.
Ripple CEO and Co-Founder React
Reacting to the malicious development, Ripple co-founder Christian Larsen explained that the compromised XRP wallet belonged to him and not Ripple. According to him, there was unauthorized access to some of his personal XRP wallets on Tuesday.
“This is an isolated incident, and Ripple wallets are secure /were never compromised,” he wrote. Larsen further noted that the problem was quickly rectified and exchanges were alerted to freeze the perpetrators’ addresses. “Law enforcement is already involved,” he remarked.
However, nearly all the affected funds were converted out of XRP according to the Ripple executive. “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 added.
Despite these clarifications, several crypto users expressed doubts over Larsen’s assertions. In particular, a certain user said Ripple was trying to sweep the hack incident under.
Tagging these claims and reports as “irresponsible,” Garlinghouse reiterated that Ripple was not hacked and no company-managed XRP wallets were compromised.
Notably, the hacking episode occurred shortly after non-zero XRP wallets surpassed 5 million on the XRP Ledger.
