XRP Remains Stuck in Five Wallets After Bitget Hack
More than 102 million XRP is still sitting in five wallets after the Bitget hack. Because of how the XRP Ledger is set up, the coin is hard to freeze or recover.
Key Takeaways
- More than 102.97 million XRP from the Bitget hack is still spread across five wallets.
- About 400,105 XRP has been moved, but most of the loot is still sitting there.
- XRP is hard to block because freeze and clawback features do not apply to the native coin.
More than 102.97 million XRP, worth about $157.48 million (€138 million), is still spread across five new wallets after the September 24 Bitget hack. According to a later snapshot, about 400,105 XRP has now been moved, but most of it is still sitting there. That raises the question of where the attackers can still turn the remaining coins into usable liquidity.
Why XRP Is Hard to Block
The core of the problem is the XRP Ledger. Freeze and clawback features only apply to tokens issued by an issuer, not to XRP itself. That means no party can lock up the native coin once it is on the ledger.
According to the source, Bitget lost about $350 million (€307 million) in the hack; the exchange itself gave a figure of $351.6 million (€308 million). The largest single chunk was XRP: about 102,976,680 coins were sent in three payments from labeled Bitget wallets to one new address. After that, the attackers split the loot into four wallets with about 20 million XRP each and a fifth wallet with 22,976,677 XRP.
What Bitget and Arkham Say
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence says a total of about $350 million (€307 million) left five Bitget wallets between 2:31 p.m. and 5:23 p.m. Eastern Time, spread across seven chains. Within that time window, the company says $228 million (€200 million) left the exchange in just 18 minutes. Arkham has now labeled 26 addresses linked to the attackers so further movements can be tracked more easily.
Bitget says its own User Protection Fund should cover the estimated loss. The exchange also said withdrawals were frozen during the security investigation, while deposits and trading continued as normal. The source also says the fund holds more than $464 million (€407 million), including a reserve of 5,500 BTC.
Why This Still Matters
For European crypto followers, this case is especially relevant because it shows how hard stolen XRP is to block once it leaves the exchange. That could further increase the role of on-chain tracking, wallet labels, and fast coordination between exchanges and researchers. At the same time, the case shows that a large fund like Bitget's is mainly meant to absorb losses, not to stop the coins from moving in the first place.
Earlier concerns about the security of the XRP Ledger also show that the infrastructure around XRP has been under a microscope for some time. That makes incidents like this extra sensitive for users who want to track their coins after a hack.
XRP was trading around $1.53 (€1.34), up 1.4% from the day before, and the market barely reacted to the theft at the time. Four of the five wallets were still completely untouched in the latest snapshot. Only if the remaining XRP moves toward swap services or exchanges could the situation become more visible to the market.
