Ripple Co-Founder Chris Larsen Hacked for $112.5 Million

Chris Larsen, Co-Founder and Executive Chair of Ripple, has said that a Jan. 30 hack in which over $112.5 million in XRP was stolen came from “a few of his personal wallets.”

Revealed by security researcher ZachXBT on Jan. 31, the funds moved from a wallet associated with Ripple through to a number of exchanges, including MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, and OKX.

Larsen confirmed the hack in a quote-tweet but clarified that the funds were his own, not from Ripple as a company.

“Yesterday, there was unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts (not @Ripple) – we were quickly able to catch the problem and notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved,” he posted.

He followed up nearly two hours later. “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. We’re working with law enforcement and have been advised that a significant portion of funds have been frozen and are pursuing the remainder aggressively. Many thanks to @XRPLF @Silkjaer for their help,” he said.

However, observers—including ZachXBT himself—reacted skeptically to this assertion. “Totally completely separate entities *wink* *wink*,” replied ZachXBT to Larsen’s post.

While Larsen has not disclosed the attack vector for the drain, Zach has some ideas. “Private key compromise, it seems,” he speculated on X.

The price of XRP dipped shortly after Zach’s announcement, going down to $.49 before regaining the $.51 it was at this morning. This is a significant decrease from the price on Jan. 30, which was .54. The dip on the 30th did not go unnoticed. “$xrp trading like there’s some news coming,” said one observer.

Ripple’s own X account has made no comment on the incident. nft now has reached out to Larsen for comment.