Bravo Bitfinex! Crypto Exchange Spoils $15B XRP Attack Attempt

YEREVAN (CoinChapter.com) — An anonymous wallet attempted to transfer XRP worth nearly $15 billion to Bitfinex on January 14, 2024. The exchange’s team identified the attempt as a “partial payments exploit.” However, the XRP price remained unimpressed. Here are more details.

Bitfinex XRP ‘Partial Payments’ Exploit

In such an exploit, the attacker manipulates the transaction process by sending an amount much lower than the one entered in the transaction field, hoping the company will credit them the difference. However, Bitfinex’s security systems thwarted this attack.

Whale Alert page, a blockchain tracking service, initially flagged the incident as a transfer of about 25.6 billion XRP from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex. This amount was nearly half of the total circulating supply of XRP. However, Whale Alert later retracted its initial report, stating there was an error in reading the Ripple node response.

Bitfinex had previously experienced a significant hack in 2016, which led to the loss of approximately 120,000 Bitcoin. Since then, the exchange has strengthened its security measures. This recent attempt to exploit the exchange using the partial payments feature of the XRP ledger was successfully prevented due to these improved security protocols.

Moreover, the same attacker allegedly tried a similar exploit on Binance, another major cryptocurrency exchange. This attempt involved transferring 58.9 billion XRP but was also unsuccessful.

XRP Did Not Budge

The failed Bitfinex exploit attempt involving XRP did not significantly impact the token’s price. When the news initially emerged, it caused alarm within the crypto community. This was primarily due to concerns over potential market impact and liquidity control, particularly if a single wallet held such a significant portion of XRP’s supply.

However, after the incident was shortly revealed to be a failed exploit attempt, and Bitfinex confirmed its systems had successfully thwarted the attack, the market price of XRP showed resilience.

Despite the large scale of the attempted exploit, XRP’s price remained relatively stable at around $0.58 on Jan 15. Additionally, the prompt response and clarification by Bitfinex’s CTO helped to calm any market fears that might have arisen due to the initial reports of the incident.

Therefore, in this case, the attempted exploit and the subsequent clarification and reassurance by Bitfinex did not lead to a notable increase or decrease in XRP’s price​.