So, I woke up this morning to the news that one of Japan's largest crypto exchange has halted withdrawals. According to Twitter user Costin Raiu (@craiu), 110 million USD in Ripple is suspected to be the result of a hack.
110 mil usd in #Ripple (XRP) were sent from the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck to an unknown address. Hacking suspected. https://t.co/hmGhlSmJEH
Costin Raiu (@craiu) January 26, 2018
Does this in anyway put into question the security of the blockchain? Or is it more likely that this was caused by hacking a user account without the proper security measures? Or the most unlikely, ironic explanation, did somebody just withdraw $110m worth of XRP for safe, offline storage?
Twitter user, XRPL Monitor (@XRPL_Monitor), which claims to monitor large transactions over 5M XRP, posted a tweet of the large 110m XRP transaction. The interesting thing about this tweet is that it shows the receiver's balance was over 3.1 Billion at the time of the transaction. This raises the question, who holds over 3.1 Billion XRP? Could there be such a prolific hacker out there or could it be one of Ripple's founders or early investors?
Transaction Type: Payment
XRPL Monitor (@XRPL_Monitor) January 26, 2018
Amount: 101,265,057.474195 XRP
Fee: 150,000 drops (0.15 XRP)
Sender: Coincheck
Sender Balance: 199,899.7
Receiver: rPccPbZH4YBVmjvL4dMMkrX8J3MKGLNApQ
Receiver Balance: 3,110,669,147.34739
Link: https://t.co/DEKMAfCHZR