XRP tumbles after news of Ripple’s $112M exploit, but is that all?

• XRP’s price dropped below $0.50 after the hacker carted away the funds.
• The token could be set for a bounce if Bitcoin’s price recovers.

The price of Ripple [XRP] plunged by 2.35% within an hour after reports emerged that some of the blockchain firm’s assets had been compromised. AMBCrypto discovered that on-chain sleuth ZachXBT was the first person to notify the community of the incident.

According to him, the perpetrators ripped Ripple of 213 million XRP. As of this writing, the tokens were worth $112.5 million. Details from Zach’s tweet showed that he tracked where the assets went.

AMBCrypto’s assessment of the situation showed that the hackers “drycleaned” the tokens among different exchanges.

It appears @Ripple was hacked for ~213M XRP ($112.5M)

Source address
rJNLz3A1qPKfWCtJLPhmMZAfBkutC2Qojm

So far the stolen funds have been laundered through MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, HitBTC, etc pic.twitter.com/HKGYsLQeMv

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 31, 2024

“Not Ripple’s. It’s mine”

The exploit marks the first major robbery in the ecosystem in 2024. However, Ripple’s chairman and co-founder Chris Larsen posted about the matter on X. But what he wrote was different from what Zach reported.

Based on Larsen’s explanation of the incident, the tokens moved were not from Ripple but from his personal XRP account. He said,

“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.”

The firm’s chairman also mentioned that with the help of the XRP Ledger Foundation (XRPLF), some of the funds had been frozen. From AMBCrypto’s understanding of the matter, Larsen’s quick clarification saved XRP from further decline.

If the chairman had not come out early, XRP’s price could have dropped to $0.45 thereabout.

Large players come to its defense

But at press time, XRP changed hands at $0.49. representing a 2.91% 24-hour decrease. This slump could be attributed to the broader market red situation as the token had initially recovered from the earlier decline.

AMBCrypto’s evaluation of the XRPL showed that there were reasons the token showed some strength. Using on-chain data from Santiment, we noticed that there were 217 million $1m+ transactions on the 31st of January.

Source: Santiment

We also observed that this was the first time the token experienced such since the July ruling when XRP was deemed not a security.

During that period, XRP’s price jumped and almost hit $1. Furthermore, wallets holding 10 million+ XRP tokens have refrained from liquidating the tokens. This suggests that whales were confident in the price potential irrespective of the recent decrease.

Realistic or not, here’s XRP’s market cap in BTC terms

If this remains the case, XRP might be one of the top contenders to rebound. But that would also depend on Bitcoin’s [BTC] movement.

Should the price of Bitcoin rise to $43,000 before this week ends, then XRP might jump to $0.52. However, if BTC stalls, the highest level the token can reach could be to reclaim the $0.50 support.