Bitget hacker moves $83 million in stolen XRP that Ripple cannot freeze
Two wallets have been almost emptied and a third is being drained, with about $75 million remaining across the five original holding accounts.
The hacker behind crypto exchange Bitget’s $388 million breach has moved about $83 million in stolen XRP out of three holding wallets, leaving another $75 million in accounts that cannot be frozen under the network’s existing rules.
Nearly 103 million XRP was taken from Bitget on Thursday and divided among five accounts. By 12:41 UTC Saturday, two accounts that initially held 20 million XRP each had been reduced to about 23 and 55 tokens, according to CoinDesk’s review of XRP Ledger records. A third was down to about 5.8 million XRP.
XRP is the currency built into the XRP Ledger, the blockchain used by payments company Ripple. The network lets companies freeze tokens they issue on it, but that power does not extend to XRP itself. Ripple has no built-in way to block the attacker from spending those coins.
Some payments followed routes already used by the first wallet. After an attempted transfer of about 521,000 XRP failed because that account lacked sufficient funds, the second sent an identical amount to the intended recipient roughly an hour later.