Ripple Fails to Freeze Stolen XRP Amid Heist at Bitget

A recent cryptocurrency heist has highlighted the limitations of Ripple's ability to freeze stolen XRP. On Thursday, September 24, an attacker drained assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the trading platform Bitget, transferring around 103 million XRP across five accounts.

The XRP were valued at $1.54 per token on CoinGecko, resulting in a loss of around $83 million for the affected users. Despite Ripple's attempts to freeze the stolen funds, it was unable to do so due to the native asset's design.

The XRP Ledger's technical documentation states that 'no one can freeze XRP in the XRP Ledger,' with addresses unable to be made to surrender tokens and a network-wide freeze not applicable to XRP. This is because XRP serves as the network's native asset, similar to Ether on Ethereum.

In contrast, issuers of tokens built on top of the XRP Ledger have access to freeze functions, including Individual Freeze, Global Freeze, and No Freeze. However, these functions require an issuer to be present, which is not the case for native coins like XRP.