XRP Shockwaves: Inside the Unbelievable Attempt to Transfer Half of its Supply
Leading up to the present moment, a significant topic of discussion within the XRP community revolves around an unusual transaction wherein an unidentified party attempted to transfer almost half of the coin’s total supply.
Initially detected by the blockchain explorer Whale Alert, the transaction aimed to move 25.6 billion XRP, equivalent to over $14.8 billion, to an XRPL address linked with Bitfinex.
Security Measures Foil Attempted Exploitation.
However, this endeavor faced a hurdle as Bitfinex had implemented protective measures to thwart such exploits.
Bitfinex CEO Paolo Ardoino explained that the exploiter tried to misuse Ripple’s partial payment feature, allowing a user to send an amount less than indicated in the transaction field.
The malevolent user specified 25.6 billion XRP for delivery, despite lacking the necessary holdings in their wallet. Consequently, the transaction failed, as Bitfinex’s data field for the delivered amount revealed that the designated address did not receive the specified quantity.
Whale Alert later issued a correction, attributing the false reporting to a problem in reading the Ripple node response, a matter they have since addressed.
It’s worth noting that the attempted transfer represented nearly 50% of XRP’s circulating supply, which stands at 54.2 billion coins, contributing to the cryptocurrency’s $31 billion market cap.
Although such a substantial movement might raise concerns, especially when directed toward a cryptocurrency exchange, market participants largely perceived the incident as an exploitation attempt of a known feature on the XRP Ledger.
Limited Impact on XRP Price
Despite the unknown identity behind this transaction, it had minimal impact on XRP’s price. Trading at $0.576 at the time of writing, XRP exhibited relative stability over the past 24 hours, indicating a resilient market response to the attempted maneuver.
The asset is also grappling with reduced volatility as the chart points to the fact it has barely seen any significant moves in days. Will that change?
