Crypto titan Chris Larsen‘s digital fortune went up in smoke last month when hackers swiped a staggering 283 million XRP tokens. The heist, valued at $150 million, wasn’t some sophisticated new attack. Nope. Just the delayed aftermath of a 2022 LastPass security breach finally coming home to roost.
Turns out the Ripple co-founder had stored his private keys in a password manager. Rookie mistake for a billionaire. The attacker accessed Larsen’s LastPass vault, grabbed the keys, and went on a spending spree. They scattered the stolen XRP across seven exchanges including Binance, Kraken, and OKX. Classic money laundering 101.
Storing crypto keys in a password manager? Might as well hand hackers your wallet and PIN.
On-chain detective ZachXBT first spotted the suspicious activity. Larsen confirmed the unauthorized access on January 31. His team scrambled to contact exchanges and freeze the compromised addresses. Law enforcement jumped in and managed to seize $23 million. Better than nothing, right?
The hack sent XRP’s price tumbling 7%. Investors weren’t thrilled. The incident raised eyebrows about Ripple’s security practices and Larsen’s control over dormant wallets. Some addresses hadn’t moved coins in 6-7 years. Suspicious.
Don’t cry for Larsen though. He still has approximately 2.7 billion XRP worth about $7 billion. He’ll survive.
The LastPass breach has been a gift that keeps on giving—for criminals. Unencrypted metadata for 25 million users was compromised in 2022. Weak master passwords were sitting ducks for brute-force attacks. Total crypto losses linked to the breach now exceed $250 million.
The Larsen hack highlights a painful lesson: online password managers and massive crypto fortunes don’t mix. The vulnerability wasn’t in the blockchain—it was human error. Using a hardware wallet instead could have kept his assets offline and protected from remote cyber attacks. The incident comes at an awkward time, with discussions about a U.S. strategic crypto reserve underway.
Cold storage. Hardware wallets. Multiple security layers. These aren’t just buzzwords—they’re necessities when you’re sitting on billions. Even for crypto billionaires, apparently.
