ZachXBT brands scammed XRP holders ‘exit liquidity for insiders’
Prolific blockchain investigator ZachXBT has expressed his frustration with constant pleas for help coming from certain parts of the crypto community.
Specifically, the pseudonymous sleuth is disinclined to help XRP holders who he believes, “provide nothing of value to the industry except exit liquidity for insiders.”
Read more: Google’s blockchain team is building an XRP killer
According to screenshots posted by another X user, the initial request (since deleted) came from a Ripple user who claims to have lost over $33,000 attempting to claim tokens from an airdrop.
The victim appears to have used a malicious wallet app which drained funds on multiple chains.
While not taking aim at specific users in particular, ZachXBT says he “will make fun of anyone” from the Ripple community who asks for help after being scammed.
He also brands the Ripple foundation “cheap,” complaining that it “no longer funds public goods that provide guidance to their community unlike other chains.”
In the absence of any Ripple community-specific forensics service, ZachXBT believes “the best option is to file an IC3 report and trace to exchanges.”
Despite the Ripple foundation’s seeming lack of concern for its own holders, Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen was reportedly keen to donate over $9 million to fund a drone-led surveillance unit for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) earlier this year.
The donation, $2 million of which will go to renting out Ripple Labs’ former offices to the SFPD, was accepted in June, according to local reporting.
Read more: Ripple’s Chris Larsen to fund police surveillance, drones in San Francisco
You win some, you lose some
In early March, addresses linked to Larsen unlocked a billion XRP tokens and sent $140 million worth to the Bithumb exchange. This happened shortly after President Trump’s announcement that XRP would be included in a basket of digital assets making up a US crypto reserve.
Trump’s blessing, secured by a lobbying firm of which Ripple was a client, caused the price of XRP to surge approximately 25%, gaining $44 billion in market capitalization in just 75 minutes.
Read more: Ripple’s Chris Larsen lost $150M in XRP after LastPass hack
In January of last year, however, Larsen lost $150 million of XRP due to what was later revealed to be the LastPass password manager security breach.
The transfers were originally reported by ZachXBT in his Investigations channel on Telegram.
Investigator burn-out
Ripple isn’t the only community that ZachXBT feels isn’t worth supporting. He also names Cardano, Pulsechain, and Hedera, and has previously stated that he’d be “muting or blocking” the constant stream of rugged memecoin traders “for wasting my time.”
He’s made it clear that he’ll ignore messages from those he deems “are low IQ or lack basic financial literacy skills” in order to concentrate on cases that are “$100K+ theft or adds value to my work (intel, ongoing incident, etc).”
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