TechFlow news — Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino stated that the alleged transfer of nearly $15 billion worth of XRP from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex on January 14 did not succeed, representing a failed "partial payment exploit" attempt.
Blockchain tracking account Whale Alert initially reported observing 25.6 billion XRP transferred from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex. However, Whale Alert later deleted the post, noting that "there were issues correctly reading Ripple node responses, resulting in some incorrect posts."
Ardoino subsequently explained on Twitter that someone attempted a 'partial payment exploit' attack against Bitfinex, with the potential attacker expecting the exchange to have misconfigured software for handling partial payments. The attack assumed that the company's systems were improperly configured—specifically, only reading the "amount" field in an XRP transaction while ignoring the actual amount delivered, which could be significantly less than the specified amount, thereby allowing the attacker to claim credit for the difference. Ardoino emphasized the attack failed because "Bitfinex properly handled the 'delivered_amount' data field."
Blockchain data shows the attacker also attempted a similar attack by trying to transfer 58.9 billion XRP to Binance, which likewise failed.
