XRP News: Bitget Hacker Moves Millions of XRP as Market Faces New Supply Risk

The attacker behind Bitget’s $388 million breach has moved around 54 million stolen XRP from three of the five wallets that initially received the funds. The transfers have renewed concerns about potential selling pressure if the tokens are eventually liquidated.

Nearly 103 million XRP was stolen from Bitget and split across five wallets after the exchange’s wallet infrastructure was compromised. While the total amount stolen has not changed, the distribution has. The funds remained mostly inactive for about a day before transfers to new addresses began.

The wallet movements do not confirm that any XRP has been sold. However, the redistribution of stolen assets can occur ahead of liquidation attempts, making the activity relevant for XRP traders.

By 12:41 UTC on Saturday, two wallets that initially held 20 million XRP each had been reduced to roughly 23 XRP and 55 XRP. A third wallet, which contained a larger portion of the stolen funds, held about 5.8 million XRP.

Around 49 million XRP, worth approximately $75 million, remained across the five original wallets at that time.

XRP was trading near $1.47, down about 3% over 24 hours but still up roughly 3% over the week. The relatively limited decline suggests traders are treating the transfers as a potential risk rather than confirmation of a major sell-off.

The stolen XRP was valued at approximately $160 million when taken, equivalent to about 4% of XRP’s reported $4.4 billion in daily trading volume. However, reported volume does not necessarily reflect the amount of liquidity available in exchange order books, meaning a large sale could still affect the market.

Why the Stolen XRP Cannot Be Frozen

If flagged XRP reaches a centralized exchange, the platform can identify the deposit, restrict the related account and prevent withdrawals. Those controls cannot be applied while the funds remain in a private wallet controlled by the attacker.

XRP is the native asset of the XRP Ledger, while its freeze mechanism applies to tokens issued on the network rather than XRP itself. Ripple therefore has no native mechanism to freeze XRP held in an attacker-controlled wallet.

For now, movements between private addresses show that the funds are being transferred but do not prove liquidation. The potential impact on XRP’s price remains uncertain.

A clearer selling signal would emerge if the stolen tokens were sent to a known exchange address or swapped into another asset on-chain. Even then, the size of any price reaction would depend on available buy-side liquidity.

Bitget’s Recovery Schedule

Bitget’s withdrawal restart is proceeding separately from the stolen XRP movements. Bitcoin withdrawals are scheduled to resume on September 28, Ethereum on September 29, USDT on September 30 and other tokens on October 2.

Bitget has said its protection fund will cover the losses and that customer balances remain unaffected.

For XRP traders, attention is now focused on the roughly $75 million in XRP still held across the original wallets and whether those funds remain dormant, move to new addresses or eventually reach a trading platform.