Fraudsters and scammers are benefiting from the current crypto tailwind to up their assaults on the crypto neighborhood, warns Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
Garlinghouse mentioned 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 doubtlessly con customers.
Losses to crypto scams hit a brand new file of $2.1 billion within the first half of 2025, beating the earlier file set in 2022 of $2 billion and practically equal to the entire losses from all of 2024.
XRP (XRP) surged to $3.66 on July 18 in response to 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% acquire 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 palms 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 newest rip-off focusing on the XRP household on YouTube and impersonating Ripple ’s official account!” mentioned Garlinghouse.
“We’ll hold 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 mentioned 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 mentioned.
An X person beneath the deal with XtinaRP mentioned one in every of 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 mentioned.
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 just like the trick the dangerous actors are utilizing now, a spear-phishing assault, the place a person’s account is hacked and its content material erased, then set again up masquerading as a outstanding cryptocurrency determine shilling a free XRP giveaway.
Nevertheless, Ripple dropped the lawsuit in March 2021, and Garlinghouse mentioned 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 growth
Different crypto companies impersonated on Google too
Ripple isn’t the one crypto agency affected by impersonators. Safety agency Rip-off Sniffer mentioned in an X publish on Monday that it had discovered a number of direct Google searches associated to crypto corporations confirmed rip-off advertisements on the high of the outcomes.
“Professional tip for DeFi customers: Cease utilizing Google seek for crypto websites except you take pleasure in taking part in Russian roulette together with your pockets!” Rip-off Sniffer mentioned.
The dangerous actors are utilizing Punycode assaults, in response to Rip-off Sniffer, a spoofing method that exploits how internationalized domains are displayed in internet browsers to seem just like the actual web site.
Journal: XRP win leaves Ripple and trade with no crypto authorized precedent set
