Binance Freezes $4.2 Million in Stolen XRP; Ripple Investigation Aided by XRP Ledger Foundation

After the unauthorized access of Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen’s personal holdings, Binance CEO Richard Teng revealed that the platform had successfully “managed to freeze $4.2 million” of the compromised assets. Teng elaborated that Binance is committed to “support[ing] Ripple in their investigations,” indicating ongoing collaboration.

New Binance CEO Discusses Freezing $4.2 Million Worth of Larsen’s Crypto

Last Wednesday, Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman, Chris Larsen, reported “unauthorized access” to several of his personal XRP accounts. Larsen disclosed this in response to a post from onchain analyst Zachxbt, who noticed the token movement.

It’s estimated that 213 million XRP, worth $112 million, were transferred out of Larsen’s personal holdings. In the wake of this security breach, Binance’s newly appointed CEO, Richard Teng, announced that his platform succeeded in freezing a portion of 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,” Teng detailed. “We appreciate both the [community] efforts in flagging it to exchanges – as always [Zachxbt] did a great job – and the Ripple team’s work in collaborating with us.”

The Binance chief executive added:

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.

Thomas Silkjær, the head of analytics and compliance at the XRP Ledger Foundation, swiftly acknowledged Teng’s X post and expressed his gratitude for Teng’s prompt and responsible actions. “This tweet is a bit ambiguous,” Silkjær added. “The compromised accounts are personal accounts of [Chris Larsen] – not an exploit at [Ripple]. The initial investigation was done by [XRP Ledger Foundation] and initiated as it was happening – not carelessly published on social media the day after like [Zachxbt].”

The XRP Ledger Foundation member continued:

Ripple is now leading the investigation (for Chris), after we did a complete handover of data.

Following this, Silkjær proceeded to share a post authored by Larsen, in which Larsen categorized the situation as “an isolated incident.” In Larsen’s post, the Ripple executive extended his gratitude to Silkjær and the XRP Ledger Foundation. When a concerned individual suggested that Larsen should have made the announcement 12 hours earlier, Silkjær, the lead for analytics and compliance at the foundation, emphasized the importance of caution in such matters.

“It is reckless to publish information during an attack as it might influence the methodology of the attackers,” Silkjær responded. “There are good reasons to not go public with anything right away.”

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