Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has reportedly frozen $4.2 million in XRP tokens that are said to be tied or linked to this past week’s $120 million exploit. This, according to an update shared via social media by Binance CEO Richard Teng.
Teng noted via X that the XRP Ledger developers, who are responsible for maintaining the blockchain that supports the XRP digital token, had flagged the major exploit to digital currency exchanges and had requested them to keep a close watch on deposits that could be related to the hacker’s crypto wallets.
Teng stated:
“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.”
The XRP tokens were seemingly stolen from a digital wallet earlier this week. The crypto wallet was later confirmed to belong to Ripple Labs Executive Chair Chris Larsen.
Larsen stated that there was a security breach impacting his “personal XRP accounts;” however, he claims that the funds did not directly belong to Ripple, the company.
Interestingly, the report of this hack led to the price of XRP falling around 5% after the news of the incident had been widely reported across social media and major news outlets. Even though this particular hack appears to have impacted only a single (whale) user, it negatively affected the entire XRP ecosystem.
Although XRP and other crypto tokens aim to serve as decentralized means of value transfer, they are often influenced by the actions or incidents associated with a few wallets, individuals, or other entities that possess a very large amount of a project’s native token. It would seem that such token projects are prone to the same negative effects that highly centralized platforms or services encounter during hacks or other damaging security breaches online.
