Ripple CEO Warns of YouTube XRP Scams Following All-Time High Surge

After XRP hit a new all-time high earlier this week, the CEO of Ripple warned of scams targeting users of the cryptocurrency.

XRP touched $3.65 earlier this week before retreating sharply, logging a 15% pullback over three days, according to data from CoinGecko. Trading volumes remain elevated, with more than $17.4 billion in XRP changing hands over the past 24 hours.

The selloff coincided with a public alert from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who warned Wednesday that scammers had hijacked YouTube accounts to impersonate Ripple and promote fake XRP giveaways.

“Like clockwork, with success and market rallies, scammers ramp up their attacks on the crypto community,” he tweeted. “As always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Garlinghouse retweeted a post by Ripple, which drew attention to an “uptick of XRP scams” on YouTube, in which scammers “are stealing accounts and then updating the page to impersonate Ripple’s official account.”

An easy target?

Analysts believe the surge in scam activity reflects the unique makeup of XRP’s holder base, which remains one of the largest and most active in crypto.

“XRP’s demographic skews toward older retail investors who may be less familiar with crypto security practices,” Ryan Yoon, senior analyst at Tiger Research, told Decrypt. “This creates a systematic vulnerability: scammers can exploit lower digital literacy while leveraging Ripple’s corporate legitimacy to appear credible.”

Unlike other crypto projects with “younger, more security-aware communities,” Yoon notes that XRP’s holder base “represents a persistently attractive target for sophisticated social engineering attacks.”

Despite this, XRP holders have shown “unusual conviction resilience” through years of regulatory pressure, Yoon said, noting that many long-time investors entered the market at sub-$1 levels.

“Sustained movement beyond $3 will test whether this philosophical commitment holds up, especially if institutional adoption doesn’t accelerate to justify these valuations,” he said.

Currently, XRP is trading at $3.25, down 2.7% on the day, per data from CoinGecko.

XRP’s status as one of the most visible and actively traded tokens makes it a “natural target” for such scam schemes, Vincent Liu, chief investment officer at Kronos Research, told Decrypt. “With high visibility comes increased risk, especially during volatile price action.”

For now, at least, XRP’s rally “looks flow-driven,” Liu said, adding that a confirmed ETF or major regulatory win would be “key to sustaining moves beyond $3.” On prediction market Myriad, over 64% of users expect that an XRP ETF will be approved before a Litecoin ETF (disclaimer: Myriad was launched by Decrypt‘s parent company DASTAN).

Still members of the XRP community note that scam cycles are an industry-wide problem, and that platform-level enforcement, not just warnings from Ripple, will be key to limiting the damage.

Whenever XRP trends upward, scammers “come out and take advantage of the market’s positive emotions, like greed and excitement,” Migs Caparas, a member of the XRP community, told Decrypt.

According to Caparas, some go as far as infiltrating XRP communities by hacking social accounts, “setting up shop” to scam people.

“It’s right for Ripple to keep reminding XRP holders to be mindful of these schemes,” he said, adding that the company isn’t obligated to intervene but has done so consistently. “It’s not even their job, but I appreciate Ripple for taking those extra steps.”