Can XRP Be Frozen? What the Bitget Hack Showed About XRP vs Stablecoins

When the exchange Bitget was hacked in late September 2026, two companies froze part of the stolen money within hours. The stolen stablecoins stopped dead. The roughly 103 million stolen XRP did not, because nobody has a button that can freeze XRP.

The Bullrunners video uses the hack to explain a design choice that goes back to Ripple’s early days: XRP was built without an off switch, while the dollar tokens that run alongside it on the same ledger were built with one. For holders, the more practical question is where the switch on their own XRP actually sits.

What happened in the Bitget hack?

According to the video, Bitget spotted unauthorized transfers leaving its hot wallets (the wallets an exchange keeps topped up for everyday withdrawals) on the evening of Thursday, September 24. By the next afternoon, Bitget’s own count of the loss was $387.5 million.

Early on Friday, September 25, Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, blacklisted an address that blockchain trackers had labeled as one of the exploiter’s wallets. Tether followed. About $318,000 of stablecoins froze on the spot.

The XRP was different. The attacker held nearly 103 million XRP, and about $83 million worth of it had moved out of the holding wallets by Saturday lunchtime. A CoinDesk headline summed it up: stolen XRP that Ripple cannot freeze.

Why can stablecoins be frozen but XRP cannot?

A stablecoin like USDT or USDC is a digital dollar with a company behind it, and that company keeps a list. If an address goes on the list, its coins cannot move. The video compares it to a gift card that spends like money until the shop that issued it cancels it.

XRP has no issuer standing behind it in that way. The XRP Ledger’s own documentation states that no one can freeze XRP. The video presents this as intentional and traces it through three moments:

1. 2014. Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, on the first episode of a show called Money in Tech, described XRP as a “math-based currency,” meaning a currency without a counterparty. A counterparty is the other side of a deal: someone who owes you. A bank balance is the bank’s promise; a USDC is Circle’s.
2. June 2019. At a fintech conference in New York, Ripple’s David Schwartz said stablecoins have counterparties, that no counterparty is equally accessible to everyone, and that any stablecoin will sit in some jurisdiction and regulatory regime.
3. August 2022. After the US Treasury sanctioned the privacy tool Tornado Cash, Circle froze about $75,000 of USDC in the sanctioned addresses. Jerry Brito of Coin Center explained that people with ETH there still had their keys and could technically retrieve it, though doing so without a license would break the law, while the USDC could not move at all until Circle allowed it.

The video’s point from that last example: holding your own keys never placed anyone above the law. It just means the button is yours, not an issuer’s.

Does Ripple’s own stablecoin have an off switch?

Yes. Ripple’s dollar stablecoin on the ledger, RLUSD, is built the same way as USDC. According to the video, Schwartz wrote in April that a stablecoin can be frozen or clawed back by its issuer, and that Ripple cannot refuse a US court order.

So the company behind XRP runs both kinds of money on one ledger. The video quotes the head of the XRP Ledger Foundation describing how the ledger bridges any asset with an XRP market through XRP automatically. In the video’s framing, two issuers’ dollars, each with its own switch, can meet through the one asset that has none.

If XRP can’t be frozen, how is stolen XRP stopped?

At the exits. A thief still has to swap the coins or cash them out, and that is where the law reaches. According to the video, Bitget published the attacker’s XRP address so every exchange could watch for it. On the Saturday, Bitget’s chief asked ThorChain, a cross-chain swap service, to refuse service to those addresses. “Decentralization is a design principle, not a shield,” she wrote.

XRP is not beyond the law. The ledger simply has no stop button, so the stopping happens where coins turn into other coins or cash.

Where is the off switch on your XRP?

For most holders, it is the exchange. When Bitget detected the hack, it paused withdrawals for every account that same night. The video gives a second example:

• WazirX, one of India’s largest exchanges, lost over $213 million in a hack on July 18, 2024 and shut withdrawals the same day. Trading did not reopen until October 24, 2025, about 15 months later.

The video’s warning is that you do not get advance notice. “I’ll just move it off the exchange if anything happens” does not work if withdrawals are paused the moment something happens.

The host suggests a simple check: open the app where your XRP sits, start a withdrawal without sending anything, and read the daily limit and any notes about maintenance. That screen shows you who controls when your XRP moves.

What regulators say about the switch on stablecoins

The freeze ability on stablecoins is becoming a legal requirement, not just a design choice:

• The GENIUS Act, America’s stablecoin law, will take effect in January 2027, according to Circle’s CEO, speaking on CNBC in July. Circle is seeking a national trust bank charter to fit under it.
• A Senate Banking Committee fact sheet says issuers must keep the ability to freeze and burn coins on a lawful order.
• In June, the Bank for International Settlements said making stablecoins more money-like requires redeemability at par, with preventing illicit finance also a priority.

Is the “no switch” design good for XRP’s price?

That question is still open, and the video says so. In October 2025, trader and podcaster Scott Melker called XRP’s design elegant but questioned whether it ever turns into demand for the coin. Schwartz replied that XRP is the only asset without a counterparty that every account in every jurisdiction can access, with no risk of default, freeze or clawback.

Whether the market pays for that feature is unproven. The host offers his own view that it might, but adds that nobody can say when, and that a strong week for the story does not tell you what the price does next.

Three decisions the video leaves holders with

1. Whose button is your XRP behind right now? Yours, or an exchange’s?
2. Is it doing anything while you wait, or just sitting there?
3. Have you decided in advance what you would do and when you would move, before the next exchange incident?

Plan before a crisis, not during one: once withdrawals are paused, it is too late to start. Also watch January 2027, when the GENIUS Act’s freeze requirements for regulated stablecoins are due to apply.