XRP News: Bitget Hacker Moves 54M XRP as Selling Pressure Builds

The attacker responsible for Bitget’s $388 million breach has moved roughly 54 million stolen XRP out of three of the five wallets that initially received the funds. The transfers have increased concerns about potential selling pressure on XRP.

Nearly 103 million XRP was stolen from Bitget and distributed across five wallets after the exchange’s wallet infrastructure was compromised. The size of the stolen amount has not changed, but its distribution has. After remaining largely inactive for about a day, the funds have now begun moving into additional addresses.

The next question is what happens from here. This type of on-chain activity can sometimes appear before an attempted liquidation, although the transfers alone do not confirm that a sale has taken place.

Two wallets that initially received 20 million XRP each had been reduced to roughly 23 XRP and 55 XRP, respectively, by 12:41 UTC on Saturday. A third wallet, which contained a larger portion of the stolen funds, held about 5.8 million XRP after the same period. Around 49 million XRP, valued at approximately $75 million, remained across the five original wallets at that point.

XRP was trading near $1.47, down roughly 3% over the previous 24 hours while still maintaining a weekly gain of about 3%. The token has not experienced a major collapse following the transfers, suggesting that the market is treating the movement as a potential risk rather than confirmation that a large sell-off has occurred.

The stolen XRP was initially worth approximately $160 million, representing about 4% of XRP’s reported $4.4 billion in daily trading volume. However, reported trading volume does not necessarily represent the amount of liquidity available on exchange order books to absorb a large transaction.

An exchange receiving flagged XRP can restrict the associated account and prevent withdrawals once the deposit has been identified. However, it cannot freeze native XRP while the assets remain in a wallet controlled by the attacker. Such restrictions become relevant only after the funds reach a platform where the exchange can take action.

Native XRP Cannot Be Frozen in the Attacker’s Wallet

XRP is the native asset of the XRP Ledger, and that distinction is important when assessing recovery efforts. The ledger’s freeze functionality applies to issued tokens built on the network, rather than XRP itself. As a result, Ripple does not have a built-in mechanism to prevent an attacker from transferring or spending native XRP while it remains in a wallet under their control.

If the remaining XRP stays in private wallets, the transactions currently confirm that the funds are moving but do not establish that they have been sold. In that scenario, the potential price impact remains uncertain.

The situation would change if the tokens reached a known exchange wallet or were converted into another asset on-chain. Such activity would provide stronger evidence of potential selling pressure. The eventual impact on XRP’s price would then depend largely on the amount of available buy-side liquidity when the transactions occur.

Meanwhile, Bitget’s recovery schedule is progressing separately. Bitcoin withdrawals are expected 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. That leaves the main market question centered not on the exchange’s solvency, but on where the approximately $75 million worth of remaining XRP eventually moves.

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