Bitget hacker moves $83 million in stolen XRP that Ripple cannot freeze

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.

That leaves recovery efforts dependent in part on where the money goes next. An exchange receiving stolen XRP can restrict the recipient’s account and prevent withdrawals. It cannot freeze coins while they remain in a wallet controlled by the attacker.