In a tweet on July 21, David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple Labs, sounded an alarm over a deceitful website attempting to deceive XRP coin holders. The dubious site, “holdxrp.com,” bears an uncanny resemblance to Medium, and proclaims a fraudulent airdrop with a fabricated blog post allegedly penned by Ripple’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. Schwartz issued a stern caution, urging users to exercise vigilance.
Upon investigating the dubious site, it becomes apparent that the post has received an astonishing 5,326 claps, an artificially inflated number aimed at lending credibility to the scam. The post contains phishing links, which, if clicked, could lead to the unwarranted exploitation of users’ funds. Disturbingly, the fraudsters went so far as to impersonate prominent figures like Ben Armstrong, Carl from the Moon, and Crypto Rover, leaving fraudulent comments on the post.
Ever since the XRP ruling declared secondary sales of the cryptocurrency to be non-securities, the token and Ripple have been plagued by numerous scams. Seizing the opportunity amidst surging social interest in XRP, malicious actors have orchestrated phony airdrops and giveaways to ensnare unsuspecting community members.
Schwartz’s consistent warnings regarding such scams have received widespread support from verified XRP-linked Twitter accounts, urging followers to boycott dubious websites. It is crucial for the XRP community to remain wary, as bad actors continue to exploit vulnerabilities in the crypto space. Genuine announcements from verified Ripple platforms should be the only ones trusted, while the rest must be promptly dismissed to safeguard against potential harm.
