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David Schwartz, the chief technical officer (CTO) of American blockchain payments company Ripple Labs Inc has come out to label a fake website trying to form an affiliation with the XRP coin. Taking to his Twitter account, Schwartz cautioned that the website called "holdxrp . com" is a scam site, a call for users to be careful.
Gamza KhanzadaevCAUTION: holdxrp . com is a scam site.
— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) July 21, 2023
While not recommended, a visit to the site shows a Medium-like interface containing the announcement of a fake airdrop featuring a blog post from Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple Labs Inc. Surprisingly, the post has received a phony 5,326 claps, a figure that is possibly engineered to give the website and the announcement some legitimacy.
The announcement contains a number of phishing links which, when clicked, might result in unforeseen exploitation of the user's funds. The fraud in creating the site was also manifested with the impersonation of top figures in the industry like Ben Armstrong (BitBoy Crypto), Carl from the Moon and Crypto Rover, among others, to comment on the post.
XRP is new target
Since the XRP ruling in which Judge Analisa Torres declared that secondary sales of the cryptocurrency are not securities, there have been many scams linked to the token and Ripple as a whole. With the social interest in the token now at its peak, many bad actors are trying to get a slice of the cake by creating phony airdrops and giveaways just to lure unsuspecting community members.
While David Schwartz has been warning of related scams for some time now, the top genuine XRP-linked Twitter accounts have supported his calls to boycott many websites.
It is worth noting that bad actors exist in crypto, the reason why many platforms have been hacked to date, and XRP community members need to know that announcements that do not come from verified Ripple platforms are most likely fake and should be ignored.
Arman Shirinyan
Dan Burgin
Alex Dovbnya