XRP ‘saved’ as Hong Kong-based exchange thwarts attack

• An attacker tried to use XRP’s payment function to exploit the Bitfinex exchange.
• XRP’s price increased after the exchange foiled the attempt.

The crypto market was thrown into distress on the 14th of January. This was because Whale Alert, in a now-deleted post, revealed that almost 50% of Ripple’s [XRP] total supply had been transferred into Bitfinex.

Alas! AMBCrypto found out that it was a case of a failed transaction and an attack on the platform.

According to Whale Alert’s post, an unknown address sent 25.6o billion XRP, representing about 46.6% of the total circulating supply into the exchange.

Source: Whale Alert via X

Bitfinex blocks the move

Details of the transactions triggered a lot of comments on the post. The reason for the reactions could be linked to the fear that XRP’s price could crash if such volume was sold.

Also, the crypto community thought the transaction was real because the Hong Kong-based exchange could handle that large amount of liquidity. At the same time, some opined that the transaction, worth $15 billion, was impossible.

However, Paolo Ardoino’s comment on the matter brought calm to the XRP community. According to Ardoino, who is CTO at Bitfinex and stablecoin issuer Tether [USDT], the transfer was not successful.

Ardoino, in his post, also mentioned that someone tried to attack the exchange via the transaction. But Bitfinex was able to stop the attempt because of some measures it had put in place.

Someone attempted to attack @bitfinex via "Partial Payments Exploit".
Attack failed since Bitfinex properly handles 'delivered_amount' data field.https://t.co/EiGw9UQmmq

(updated with better gif) https://t.co/8I7vlO05ou pic.twitter.com/DxOnJLLkhU

— Paolo Ardoino ? (@paoloardoino) January 14, 2024

Regardless, XRP’s price did not tumble. At press time, XRP changed hands at $0.58, indicating that the value jumped by 2.15% in the last 24 hours.

XRP tries to turn lemon into lemonades

However, AMBCrypto discovered that the sentiment around the token was affected. A look at the Weighted Sentiment showed that the reading was -1.655. This metric spikes when the overall social volume is high and most messages are positive.

But since it was negative, it meant that social volume was high. However, the average perception of XRP was negative at press time.

Source: Santiment

On the derivatives end of the market, Coinglass’ data showed that XRP’s volume increased. As of this writing, XRP’s volume had increased by 117.79% in the last 24 hours.

If the volume is maintained alongside the price increase, then the price of XRP could rise higher. In terms of the Open Interest (OI), AMBCrypto observed that it also rose. However, the increase here was a mild one.

The OI usually increases or decreases based on net positioning. So, the increase suggests that market participants were refraining from closing their positions.

Read Ripple’s [XRP] Price Prediction 2023-2024

However, longs were slightly more aggressive than shorts. When it comes to the price action, the OI indicated a possible XRP increase into the key support at $0.60.

Source: Coinglass

In the meantime, the Whale Alert handle had also cleared the air on the matter. According to its latest post, it had an issue reading the Ripple nodes.

?️ There was an issue with properly reading the #Ripple node response, resulting in a few wrong posts. We fixed the issue.

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) January 14, 2024