How potential $94B XRP hack was stopped: ‘This was a serious vulnerability’

Ripple has confirmed that it patched a decade-old bug that could let anyone print infinite XRP tokens. 

The vulnerability could allow one to mint 18 trillion XRP with a single transaction, nearly 184x the current total supply, according to Cayden Liao of Veria Labs. 

Liao leads the AI firm that found the XRP bug, adding that it could have been the biggest crypto hack ever if left unmitigated. XRP’s market cap was about $94B at the time the bug was found in late September. 

This puts the full $94B at risk, more than 60 times the largest crypto hack on record (Bybit, $1.5B).

Veria reported the bug on the 22nd of September. The fix shipped on the 25th, with public disclosure following on the 9th of October.

Developers bypassed the usual amendment vote for an emergency upgrade, coordinating with validators to limit the exploitation window.

Ripple’s XRP bug: Is AI bad or good for crypto?

But the most interesting part of the story is that the XRP bug has been around since 2015-2017, according to Veria Labs. Its AI agent connected two flaws and built a working exploit on a local network.

Reacting to the same, Ayo Akinyele, head of engineering at RippleX, said, 

This was a serious vulnerability. AI is fundamentally changing how quickly vulnerabilities can be discovered.

Now the Ripple team wants to double down on every critical aspect of its ecosystem, from payments to P2P networking, to check for any vulnerabilities. 

For Liao, however, the AI capabilities cut both ways. 

AI is making old bugs much cheaper to find, and attackers have access to the same tools you do.

According to Liao, there are “far more good hackers than bad ones.” As such, the potential AI-driven hacks can easily be mitigated. 

As long as defenders adopt these tools as fast as attackers do, the good guys have the upper hand.

This offers a more hopeful response to recent security fears, showing how AI could help defenders uncover longstanding vulnerabilities. Even so, the risks remain. Liao cited a Coldcard exploit involving a five-year-old bug and $89 million in reported losses.

He suggested AI may have helped uncover that flaw, although its involvement remained unconfirmed.

Separately, TRM Labs reported that AI-enabled scam activity increased roughly 500% over the previous year.

Chainalysis estimated crypto scam losses at $17 billion for 2025, covering fraud beyond AI-enabled schemes. Against that backdrop, the XRP discovery showed how AI could also help security teams find and fix dangerous bugs.

Impact on XRP?

That said, XRP sentiment has been at a ‘greed’ level as the altcoin stays above $1.3, and the recent bug update has not changed it. But only strong institutional demand could reverse the price pullback. 

Final Summary

• Ripple fixed a 10-year-old bug that could allow an attacker to print unlimited XRP tokens 
• The bug discovery was done by AI, underscoring that AI applications cut both ways in hacks and defense