Fraudsters and scammers are benefiting from the current crypto tailwind to up their assaults on the crypto neighborhood, warns Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
Garlinghouse stated in an announcement posted to X on Wednesday that the broader market rally has spurred scammers to impersonate the official Ripple YouTube account and probably con customers.
Losses to crypto scams hit a brand new document of $2.1 billion within the first half of 2025, beating the earlier document set in 2022 of $2 billion and almost equal to the overall losses from all of 2024.
XRP (XRP) surged to $3.66 on July 18, in accordance with Nansen, coming near the token’s earlier 2018 excessive of $3.84 on Coinbase. Analysts additionally predict extra upside, regardless of a ten% value retreat to $3.19 within the final 24 hours.
On the similar time, Bitcoin (BTC) has registered a greater than 7% achieve within the final 14 days, and is buying and selling at over $119,000 per coin. Ether (ETH) has spiked over 31% within the final 14 days, and is altering arms for $3,644 per token.
“Like clockwork, with success and market rallies, scammers ramp up their assaults on the crypto neighborhood — PLEASE BEWARE of the most recent rip-off focusing on the XRP household on YouTube and impersonating Ripple ’s official account!” stated Garlinghouse.
“We’ll maintain reporting these – please do the identical. As all the time, if it sounds too good to be true, it in all probability is,” he added.
Scammers stealing accounts
The official Ripple account on X stated the dangerous actors are doing this by hacking YouTube accounts and updating the web page to impersonate Ripple’s official account.
“Reminder: Ripple or our execs will NEVER ask you to ship us XRP,” Ripple stated.
An X consumer below the deal with XtinaRP stated one in all these scams was lively as of Tuesday and promised a free XRP giveaway to lure victims. It shows the video as being sponsored by Ripple.
“This one seems very convincing. Scammers are utilizing accounts with 176K subs to advertise a pretend 100M XRP occasion, Ripple will NEVER conduct giveaways. Keep cautious!” XtinaRP stated.
The official Ripple account on YouTube has over 81,000 subscribers. YouTube didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Ripple sued YouTube over impersonators earlier than
Ripple beforehand sued YouTube over impersonators in April 2021, in search of damages and accusing the video-sharing web site of taking advantage of the scammers.
One of many cons talked about within the lawsuit seems much like the trick the dangerous actors are utilizing now, a spear-phishing assault, the place a consumer’s account is hacked and its content material erased, then set again up masquerading as a outstanding cryptocurrency determine shilling a free XRP giveaway.
Nonetheless, Ripple dropped the lawsuit in March 2021, and Garlinghouse stated on the time the crypto agency and YouTube had come to a decision and agreed to fight the scams collectively.
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Different crypto corporations impersonated on Google too
Ripple isn’t the one crypto agency affected by impersonators. Safety agency Rip-off Sniffer stated in an X put up on Monday that it had discovered a number of direct Google searches associated to crypto corporations confirmed rip-off advertisements on the prime of the outcomes.
“Professional tip for DeFi customers: Cease utilizing Google seek for crypto websites until you take pleasure in enjoying Russian roulette along with your pockets!” Rip-off Sniffer stated.
The dangerous actors are utilizing Punycode assaults, in accordance with Rip-off Sniffer, a spoofing approach that exploits how internationalized domains are displayed in net browsers to seem much like the actual web site.
Journal: XRP win leaves Ripple and business with no crypto authorized precedent set
