Binance Freezes $4.2M Worth of XRP: Details

Binance has frozen $4.2 million worth of XRP from the $213 million recently stolen from Chris Larsen, the Ripple chairman’s XRP wallet.

Binance CEO Richard Teng disclosed this in a post on X last night. According to Teng, they discovered the exploit affecting Larsen’s account early and managed to freeze the portion of the assets the hackers aimed to launder through the Binance platform.

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

The Ripple Chairman, Hack

Recall that Larsen suffered a hack attack on his personal XRP account last month. While the hack occurred in the late hours of Jan. 30, it did not come to limelight until Jan. 31 when ZachXBT, a prominent blockchain sleuth, called attention to the incident.

However, ZachXBT had suggested that the exploit affected Ripple’s wallet. This was due to a mistag from XRPL explorers Bithomp and XRPScan, which designated the address as belonging to Ripple. Larsen confirmed ZachXBT’s disclosure but clarified that the wallet belongs to him, not Ripple.

According to the blockchain sleuth, on-chain data showed that the exploiters moved the assets to multiple centralized exchanges, including MEXC, Gate.io, Binance, Kraken, OKX, and HTX (formerly Huobi). 

A subsequent disclosure from Larsen revealed that the hackers had converted the assets from XRP to other tokens. In addition, Thomas Silkjær, Head of Analytics and Compliance at the XRPL Ledger (XRPL) Foundation, disclosed that efforts were underway to recover the assets. 

Binance Looking to Freeze More Assets

Silkjær noted that they had engaged law enforcement and communicated with several exchanges to detect implicated wallets in the incident. He stressed that some exchanges were more responsive than others. Binance’s latest disclosure comes a day after the incident made headlines.

Teng expressed gratitude to the community for alerting exchanges to the exploit and ZachXBT for calling the public’s attention to it. He noted that the Ripple team had also been helpful with collaborative efforts. 

According to the Binance CEO, his team will continue to monitor the development and the on-chain movements of the assets to freeze any more funds that make their way to their platform further. Binance is the only exchange that has publicly disclosed actions taken against the exploiters.

Nonetheless, Teng’s word misuse was quickly called to attention by Silkjær. He earlier mentioned that the hack affected Ripple; Silkjær clarified that it was not a Ripple hack. In response, Teng corrected his expression, confirming that the hack had impacted Larsen, not Ripple.