Chris Larsen XRP Theft: The Reported LastPass Link Explained

Somewhere out there, there's a person who walked off with hundreds of millions of XRP belonging to one of the men who started Ripple and pushed it through at least seven exchanges. And plenty of the people on the other side of those trades were probably ordinary holders buying the dip. On the 30th of January 2024, somebody got into the personal XRP accounts of Chris Lson, Ripple's co-founder and executive chairman, and a crypto detective who goes by Zack XBT, watched the coins leave. So listen, XRP holders, a thief stole $112 million of XRP from Ripple's co-founder, and the twist came later, more than a year later. And if you own XRP, the theft from Ripple's co-founder shows exactly who you're buying from.

Because once the full count came in, the stolen XRP was worth about $150 million. And at the 2025 peak, those same coins were worth about a billion. And if you've never heard of Zack XBT, he's basically a one-man detective agency for crypto because he follows stolen coins from wallet to wallet out in the open and posts what he finds for anyone to see. And there's a link at the top of the description and I'll tell you what it's for once you've heard how this one ends because the endings the bit that matters. My name's Rory.

I've been trading crypto and forex since 2020, and it's given me a full-time income and the freedom to travel the world while I do it. And by the end of this, you'll know how a thief got into a billionaire's accounts and why his coins ended up with ordinary people at 50 cents. What happened to Larsson's own XRP when the price hit the top and who actually came out of it with the money? Like if you're bullish, let's run it. [music]

Hey bull runners, welcome back. So who actually is Chris Lson? Well, he's one of the people who started Ripple back in 2012. He was its first boss, and he held one of the biggest piles of XRP on the planet for years. Forbes once called him the richest person in cryptocurrency.

And here's how he talked about it in 2018.

But fundamentally, it's about wiring an internet for money. This is almost like 1994, uh, the first days of the the data internet,

an internet for money. And whatever you think of Ripple, Larsson was holding XRP before most of us had even heard of it. So if anybody on Earth knew how to look after coins, you'd think it would be him, wouldn't you? Hold that thought. So it's the 30th of January, 2024, and XRP's sat at about 50 cents and coins start pouring out of Len's account.

The next day, Zack XPTt posts that it looks like Ripple's been hacked for about 213 million XRP, and he lists where the coins are going. MEXE, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, and more. And that to me is the bit people miss because it's a thief sending coins to an exchange. He's not keeping them, is he? He's swapping them for something else as fast as he can.

And every swap needs somebody on the other side of it. And CNBC had it on the next morning.

Blockchain Sloo Zack XBT pointed out in a post on X that around $112 million in XRP had seemingly been stolen on Tuesday. [music] Speculation that the Ripple platform had been hacked sent the price of XRP tumbling. But in a post on X this morning, Ripple co-founder Chris Lson clarified that it was his own personal accounts that had been accessed, not a hack of Ripple itself.

So, it was his own personal accounts, not Ripples. Larsson posted that they caught it quickly, told the exchanges to freeze the addresses, and the police were involved. And Binance did freeze about $4.2 million of it. 4 million out of over 100 million. The rest had gone, hadn't it?

And XRP itself dropped about 5% as low as 49. And listen to me on this because it's the whole story in one line. Every coin somebody dumps, somebody else buys. And at the end of January 2024, the somebody else was ordinary people sat at home seeing XRP down 5% and thinking, well, that's a nice little dip. And some of them without knowing it were buying coins that had just come out of a billionaire's account from a thief who take whatever price he could get.

So, pause it for a second and have a guess. How do you think they got in? Was it a dodgy email, a fake app, or a text pretending to be the bank? Because for over a year, nobody outside really knew. Then, in March 2025, the American government filed a court case to take back about $23 million of stolen crypto. and Krebs on security, one of the best known security reporters around, tied that case to $150 million theft from January 2024.

And the full court came out at about $283 million XRP. And the door they came through wasn't an email at all. It was Last Pass. And if you don't know Last Pass, it's a password manager. So think of it as one app that keeps all your passwords in a lock box.

And back in December 2022, Last Pass told the world hackers had copied backups of its customers locked boxes. And the reporting is that the thieves then work through cracking them one by one. So the door got opened in 2022 and the coins went out in January 2024, more than a year later. And Zack XPTt didn't hold back because he said straight out, never store your private key in a password manager or back your wallet up to the cloud. Which is crazy because Last Pass got fined around 1.2 2 million over that breach in the UK in December 2025.

And that's against $150 million from just one victim. But here's what really got me about the story. The thief was patient going in. More than a year sat on those copied vaults and then not patient when coming out because the coins went straight to the exchanges about 50. So do the quick sum with me.

283 million XRP at about 53. That's your 150 million. Then in July 2025, XRP hit its record about $3.65. And the very same coins would have been worth about a billion dollars. Every coin somebody dumps, somebody else buys.

So whoever picked those coins up at 50 in early 2024 and just sat on them without knowing where they'd come from, was the one who got paid for the patience. Not a thief. Him or her, the ordinary holder who didn't panic. And this is where the story turns right round on itself. July 2025 comes.

XRP's flying towards that record. Every headline streaming about it and Zack XBT spots something else. From the 17th of July, an address linked to Chris Lson sent out 50 million XRP. About $175 million worth and about 140 million of it ended up at exchanges and services. And by Zach XPTt's count, wallets linked to Larsson had about 2.8 billion XRP left on top of that.

And I'll be straight with you, sending coins to an exchange isn't proof somebody sold. But look at the numbers side by side. 50 million of Larsson's coins near the top were worth more than all the 283 million the thief took near the bottom. And who was on the other side? Well, in July 2025, plenty of ordinary people were piling in at around $3.5.

So, the thief let the coins go far too early and Larsson's coins hit the exchanges near the top. Every coin somebody dumps, somebody else buys. And the whole question is whether you're buying because you've got a plan or just because the price is moving. But let's be fair about it. Len was in XRP from the very start.

And taking some off the table after holding for over a decade near a record is what plenty of sensible people would do if that's what it was. And nobody times it perfectly. Not him, not a thief, and definitely not me. And look at what happened next. Because on the 18th of October 2026, Coin Gecko had XRP at about a $130, nearly 23 off that top.

So anybody who bought in at 3.5 is sat on a big loss. And even the thief's 280 million would be worth about 370 million at that price, not a billion. So tell me in the comments, were you buying XRP in early 2024? Yes or no? Because if you were, there's a chance some of your coins came from that thief.

And I get it because the hard bit was never knowing what to buy, was it? It's sitting there when it drops 5% on a scary headline and sitting there again when it's flying and everyone at work suddenly is an expert. Because when you've got real money in this money for a wedding, you're helping pay for a car that's on its last legs or just a bit of breathing room, every big move feels like it's testing you personally. And that's not you being weak. That's just what it feels like when nobody's shown you how to have a plan.

And the ones who come out of a story like this, all right, usually aren't the fastest. They're the ones who knew what they do, whoever was selling. There's a member of ours called James who came to us with a $20,000 bill from the IRS for back taxes from early years. The team took him through a framework. He stuck to it with the portfolio he was building, and he paid off that whole 20 grand.

Then on top of that, he bought his first ever house. Everyone's results are different and I can't promise you what James got, but the people inside come from every sort of background. Plenty of them just looking after what they've spent years building and they get a weekly call where they can put their questions to our research team and a coach of their own onetoone. So, am I telling you to buy XRP? Well, no. there may be better opportunities for your situation.

But if you've got real money in this and nobody's ever sat down with you and gone through what you actually hold, how it's stored, and what you'll do the next time the coins come flooding onto the exchanges, that's what the call's really for. I've done well in crypto in my own right, and the thing that properly sped me up was the team we built at Altcoin Pro, and that's who you'd be talking to. Just click the first link in the description, watch the short video, press the button underneath it, fill in the short form, and book your free 15-minute call. And if you're watching this on your phone, just tap more under the video. And the link's right there at the top.

It's for people holding $50,000 or more in crypto that's just sitting there. And if you're already well set up, they'll tell you that, too. And the Fed's minutes from its late October meeting come out on the 18th of November. And days like that can move the whole market either way. So get your call booked in before then because the thief had all the patience in the world going in and none coming out.

And Lson had the coins and the only person in this story with no say in any of it was the one clicking by. So don't be the one buying blind. And look, none of this is financial advice, guys. It's just my take after a lot of digging. Crypto carries risk and what's happened before is no guarantee of what comes next.

So stick with me, subscribe, and there's a new one every day. Thanks for watching, guys. Keep your head stacked with purpose and I'll keep you posted.