Binance Freezes $4.2M In XRP Hack

Binance froze $4.2 million XRP following the $112 million hack on Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s wallet.

The $112 million hack of Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s wallet on January 31st resulted in the freezing of $4.2 million worth of XRP by cryptocurrency exchange Binance, making it the biggest hack of 2024 thus far.

Binance CEO Richard Teng commended on-chain sleuth ZachXBT and the Ripple team for their cooperation and support in a post on social media platform X, revealing that the exchange has frozen the exploiter’s address.

The exploit’s hacker does not conceal their identify via decentralized exchanges or cryptocurrency mixer services. Most exploiters have ceased using centralized exchanges as of late in order to minimize the risk of having their assets frozen.

Early on, there was talk that Ripple had been compromised; according to some reports, the XRP token had been compromised. Larsen subsequently disclosed, though, that Ripple itself had not been compromised—rather, it was his personal accounts.

Later, ZachXBT disclosed that uncertainty regarding the breach resulted from the Ripple attribution for the impacted account being identified as Ripple itself in XRP block explorers XRPScan and Bithomp.

Co-founder of Ripple Larsen disclosed that 213 million XRP had been taken and that some of his personal XRP accounts had been hijacked. Larsen added that Ripple has notified law authorities and is in discussions with cryptocurrency exchanges to freeze the exploiter address.

ZachXBT claims that after obtaining 213 million XRP, or roughly $112.5 million, the exploiters tried to launder the XRP through a minimum of six exchanges: MEXC, Gate.io, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, and HitBTC.

While some of the stolen assets have been frozen by Binance, OKX and Kraken, two other cryptocurrency exchanges, have not yet disclosed whether they have located or blocked any funds linked to the incident. When Binance and Ripple were contacted for more information, neither company responded by the deadline for publication.