Fraudsters and scammers are making the most of the current crypto tailwind to up their assaults on the crypto group, warns Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
Garlinghouse said in a press release 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 report of $2.1 billion within the first half of 2025, beating the earlier report set in 2022 of $2 billion and practically equal to the total losses from all of 2024.
XRP (XRP) surged to $3.66 on July 18 according to Nansen, coming near the token’s earlier 2018 excessive of $3.84 on Coinbase. Analysts also predict more 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 group PLEASE BEWARE of the most recent rip-off focusing on the XRP household on YouTube and impersonating Ripple ’s official account!” stated Garlinghouse.
“We are going to preserve reporting these – please do the identical. As at all times, if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is,” he added.
Scammers stealing accounts
The official Ripple account on X said the unhealthy 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 beneath the deal with XtinaRP said one in all these scams was energetic as of Tuesday and promised a free XRP giveaway to lure victims. It shows the video as being sponsored by Ripple.
“This one seems to be 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 website of benefiting from the scammers.
One of many cons talked about within the lawsuit seems just like the trick the unhealthy actors are utilizing now, a spear phishing attack, the place a consumer’s account is hacked and its content material erased, then set again up masquerading as a distinguished 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.
Associated: Ripple confirms intention to pursue MiCA license for EU expansion
Different crypto corporations impersonated on Google too
Ripple isn’t the one crypto agency affected by impersonators. Safety agency Rip-off Sniffer said in an X submit on Monday that it had discovered a number of direct Google searches associated to crypto firms confirmed rip-off adverts on the prime of the outcomes.
“Professional tip for DeFi customers: Cease utilizing Google seek for crypto websites until you get pleasure from enjoying Russian roulette along with your pockets!” Rip-off Sniffer stated.
The unhealthy actors are utilizing Punycode assaults, in line with Rip-off Sniffer, a spoofing approach that exploits how internationalized domains are displayed in net browsers to look just like the actual web site.
Journal: XRP win leaves Ripple and industry with no crypto legal precedent set
