Binance has frozen over $4.2 million worth of the looted XRP coins connected to the recent account hack on Ripple.
Binance CEO Richard Teng announced this development in a post on X and noted the the prompt action was possible due to early detection when the suspicious transactions were flagged on the X.
A ZachXBT, a pseudonymous crypto influencer, had reported in a post on X on January 31, 2024, that 213 million XRP coins (worth $112.5 million) were stolen from the Ripple platform. According to the report, the looted funds were dispersed across eight different wallets on various exchanges, including Binance, MEXC, Gate, OKX, Kraken, HitBTC, and HTX.
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
ZachXBT’s announcement of the stolen funds on his X account.
A few hours after ZachXBT’s report, Ripple Labs cofounder Chris Larsen announced that the hack resulted from “unauthorized access” to his personal accounts.
Larsen, as well as CEO Brad Garlinghouse, clarified that no other accounts were affected. They reassured members of the crypto community that all the accounts maintained by Ripple were safe and that customers did not need to worry.
In his post, Teng expressed his gratitude to ZachXBT for playing a key role in raising awareness of the issue and outlining how the stolen funds were tracked. He also commended the Ripple team for working closely with Binance to resolve the issue.
Teng emphasized that the exchange would continue supporting Ripple in its investigations and efforts to recover the stolen funds.
After finding out early on about the exploit that occurred at @Ripple, we’re happy to say that the #Binance team has managed to freeze $4.2 Million worth of $XRP stolen by the exploiter.
We appreciate both the communities efforts in flagging it to exchanges – as always @zachxbt…
— Richard Teng (@_RichardTeng) February 1, 2024
Binance CEO Richard Teng’s Announcement on the frozen stolen funds.
Following the announcement of the exploit, XRP’s price dropped by over 5% and went on to a downtrend from which it is yet to recover. According to CoinMarketCap data, the coin is currently trading at $0.5052.
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