The hacker behind Bitget's $387.5 million breach has moved about $83 million in stolen XRP out of three holding wallets, leaving roughly $75 million in accounts that Ripple cannot freeze under the XRP Ledger's rules. Circle and Tether have frozen about $320,000 in related stablecoins, while Bitget says its protection fund covers customer losses.
The attacker behind Bitget's breach has moved about $83 million in stolen XRP out of three holding wallets, according to CoinDesk's review of XRP Ledger records. That leaves about $75 million sitting in accounts the network's rules cannot freeze.
Two wallets nearly emptied
Nearly 103 million XRP was taken from Bitget on Thursday and split 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, while a third fell to about 5.8 million XRP.
Ripple issues XRP on the XRP Ledger, and the network lets companies freeze tokens they issue on it. But that power does not extend to XRP itself, so Ripple has no built-in way to stop the attacker from spending the coins. An exchange that receives the stolen tokens can restrict the recipient's account, but it cannot freeze funds while they sit in a wallet the attacker controls.
Transfers accelerated overnight
The pace of transfers picked up sharply. At 04:32 UTC Saturday, about 70 million tokens remained in the original five accounts; roughly eight hours later, that balance had fallen to 49 million. Some transfers followed routes the first wallet had already used: after an attempted transfer of about 521,000 XRP failed for lack of funds, the second wallet sent an identical amount to the intended recipient about an hour later.
About 54 million XRP has now left the original holding accounts, spreading the stolen funds across more wallets, though the transfers do not show how much has been sold. Separately, Circle and Tether have frozen about $320,000 in related stablecoins tied to the breach, using the blacklist controls built into their tokens.
XRP price and Bitget's response
XRP traded around $1.54 on Saturday, down about 4% over 24 hours while still up roughly 9% for the week, according to CoinGecko. At that price, the original haul was worth roughly $160 million, equivalent to about 4% of XRP's $4.4 billion in reported daily trading volume.
Bitget raised its estimate of the overall theft to $387.5 million on Friday after including Zcash and TRON transfers missed in its initial accounting, saying the higher figure reflected assets taken in the original breach rather than a new attack. The exchange said its protection fund covers the loss and customer balances remain unaffected, with withdrawals scheduled to resume in stages from Sept. 28 through Oct. 2.
Source: CoinDesk
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