Chris Larsen, the executive chairman of San Francisco-based payments firm Ripple Labs, has been hacked, resulting in the theft of 213 million XRP tokens.
The cyberattack, which targeted Larsen’s holdings, has led to a loss estimated at around US$112 million.
According to ZachXBT, an online blockchain sleuth who first reported the hack on X (formerly Twitter), the stolen funds have been “laundered” through cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, Kraken and OKX.
“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,” said Larsen.
Larsen added that the hack was an isolated incident and Ripple’s wallets are secure.
XRP, the cryptocurrency that Ripple Labs builds its payment products around, had a steep drop of around 5% following the incident. It traded at US$0.5114 at 2:00 p.m. ET, according to CoinGecko data.