Prolific blockchain investigator ZachXBT has expressed his frustration with fixed pleas for assist coming from sure components of the crypto neighborhood.
Particularly, the pseudonymous sleuth is disinclined to assist XRP holders who he believes, “provide nothing of value to the industry except exit liquidity for insiders.”
Ripple holders present nothing of worth to the business besides exit liquidity for insiders thus aren’t price supporting (Likewise with Cardano, Pulsechain, Hedera, and so forth)
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) August 28, 2025
In keeping with screenshots posted by one other X consumer, the preliminary request (since deleted) got here from a Ripple consumer who claims to have misplaced over $33,000 making an attempt to assert tokens from an airdrop.
The sufferer seems to have used a malicious pockets app which drained funds on a number of chains.
Whereas not taking intention at particular customers particularly, ZachXBT says he “will make fun of anyone” from the Ripple neighborhood who asks for assist after being scammed.
He additionally manufacturers the Ripple basis “cheap,” complaining that it “no longer funds public goods that provide guidance to their community unlike other chains.”
Within the absence of any Ripple community-specific forensics service, ZachXBT believes “the best option is to file an IC3 report and trace to exchanges.”
Regardless of the Ripple basis’s seeming lack of concern for its personal holders, Ripple Labs co-founder Chris Larsen was reportedly eager to donate over $9 million to fund a drone-led surveillance unit for the San Francisco Police Division (SFPD) earlier this 12 months.
The donation, $2 million of which is able to go to renting out Ripple Labs’ former workplaces to the SFPD, was accepted in June, in keeping with native reporting.
You win some, you lose some
In early March, addresses linked to Larsen unlocked a billion XRP tokens and despatched $140 million price to the Bithumb trade. This occurred shortly after President Trump’s announcement that XRP can be included in a basket of digital property making up a US crypto reserve.
Trump’s blessing, secured by a lobbying agency of which Ripple was a consumer, induced the value of XRP to surge roughly 25%, gaining $44 billion in market capitalization in simply 75 minutes.
In January of final 12 months, nevertheless, Larsen misplaced $150 million of XRP as a result of what was later revealed to be the LastPass password supervisor safety breach.
The transfers had been initially reported by ZachXBT in his Investigations channel on Telegram.
Investigator burn-out
Ripple isn’t the one neighborhood that ZachXBT feels isn’t price supporting. He additionally names Cardano, Pulsechain, and Hedera, and has beforehand acknowledged that he’d be “muting or blocking” the fixed stream of rugged memecoin merchants “for wasting my time.”
He’s made it clear that he’ll ignore messages from these he deems “are low IQ or lack basic financial literacy skills” with the intention to focus on instances which might be “$100K+ theft or adds value to my work (intel, ongoing incident, etc).”
