Ripple leads investigation into $112M XRP stolen from co-founder
Binance froze $4.2 million worth of XRP stolen from Chris Larsen earlier this week
Ruslan Ivantsov/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
Binance CEO Richard Teng confirmed that the exchange froze $4.2 million worth of XRP stolen from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen.
“We will continue to support Ripple in their investigations and their efforts to retrieve back the funds, including closely monitoring the majority of funds still in the exploiter’s external wallets in case they deposit to Binance,” Teng said in a post on X.
The attack was initially publicly disclosed by on-chain detective ZachXBT. Ripple didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about the attack’s disclosure.
Read more: Ripple was not hacked for $112M XRP — but its co-founder was
“It is reckless to publish information during an attack as it might influence the methodology of the attackers. There are good reasons to not go public with anything right away,” XRP Ledger Foundation’s head of analytics and compliance, Thomas Silkjær, said in response to questioning on X about the timing of the disclosure.
The XRP Ledger Foundation is an “independent non-profit entity which works to support development and usage of the XRP Ledger.”
Silkjær, in response to Teng, said that the XRP Ledger Foundation was behind the initial investigation, promptly notifying Larsen of the attack.
He also clarified that Ripple is leading the investigation into the attack on behalf of Larsen.
According to Silkjær, crypto exchange WhiteBit notified them of “suspicious deposits” leading to the team becoming aware of the attack.
At the time, ZachXBT noted that it appeared that Ripple had been hacked for $112 million before Larsen said, in a follow-up post, that the attacker went after his personal XRP accounts.
Larsen assured the public that the team knew about the incident and that law enforcement had already been contacted.
“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,” Larsen said following the hack.
Larsen said that exchanges used to launder the XRP, which included Binance, had been made aware of the attack.
Timestamps on the data presented by ZachXBT showed that the attacks had begun on Jan. 30, a day before his post. However, it had not yet been publicly disclosed when the detective made the post on X.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
