Rumors of the US Treasury’s alleged foray onto the XRP Ledger (XRPL) have been circulating, sparking buzz across the digital asset community. On January 21, several community accounts on X claimed that an address linked to “home.treasury.gov” had surfaced on the ledger, creating trustlines with well-known financial institutions resembling Bank of America, BlackRock, and JPMorgan.

XRP Scam Alert

Nevertheless, a deeper look under the hood has uncovered a series of red flags indicating that the wallet in query is neither authentic nor affiliated with the US Treasury. Community member Echo X (@echodatruth), took to X to debunk the rumor through an in depth video breakdown.

Within the video, he explained that there are numerous red flags with the wallet. “If you happen to go XRP Scan and you set within the wallet address, you’ll notice that they’ve not only just all of those different tokens from Bank of America, BlackRock, and JP Morgan, which again, that’s already a red flag, but you possibly can notice they’ve 16,000 XRP that has been deposited into this wallet by people just sending it over to the Treasury. Or what they think is the [Treasury].”

In keeping with Echo X, any user can easily confirm these discrepancies by exploring the wallet on XRPL scanners resembling XRPScan or Bithomp. He and other developers from BuildX and the ERS team identified an unusual pattern of newly issued “Bank of America,” “BlackRock,” and “JPMorgan” tokens, all minted by the identical address—strong indicators that the tokens will not be legitimate.

Public data from Bithomp shows that the suspect wallet was activated on January 21 at 3:17 UTC, after which it promptly set its domain to the official US Treasury address, home.treasury.gov—a move observers consider was intended to look legitimate.

Notably, the wallet received 1 trillion units of every of the so-called “Bank of America,” “BlackRock,” and “JPMorgan” tokens, placed multiple sell orders for tens of hundreds of thousands of those tokens in exchange for XRP and used questionable domain references, including an apparently invalid “BRICS domain.”

Echo X highlighted that users who looked deeper into the provenance of those tokens would discover their suspicious origins. He noted: “Now, in case you actually click on it and also you see what the Genesis wallets are … it leads you to a BRICS domain wallet. … That BRICS domain isn’t even a legitimate domain. Why would the BRICS be making a wallet?”

Further compounding doubts, data shows the wallet’s trustlines were created around newly issued tokens that hold no official backing. In a single notable transaction, the address placed an order to trade 299 million JPMorgan tokens for 33.23 million XRP, at an exchange rate of 0.11 XRP per token, raising more eyebrows about its authenticity.

The rumor gained traction when it appeared on XRPScan that the addresses in query had some type of verification tag—a side that typically shows that a wallet has accomplished a Know Your Customer (KYC) process. Nevertheless, Wietse Wind, founding father of Xaman (formerly Xumm), clarified that verification on XRPScan simply indicates whether the account holders have submitted personal data, not that they represent any particular entity. Wind noted via X:

“The domain field is a public field on an account on the blockchain, anyone can enter anything there. Issued tokens will be issued by anyone. KYC will be done by anyone. … XRPScan shows data that lives on the ledger. This data lives on the ledger. […] They’re all the truth is KYC’d. By different people, all from the Philippines. So there we now have it. KYC helps, however it’s still no guarantee.”

Wind’s remarks underscore that the KYC process is restricted to verifying a person’s identity. It doesn’t confirm that person’s affiliation with a company, resembling the US Treasury or any major bank. Effectively, a user can label a wallet “Treasury,” mint tokens named after financial institutions, and set a website to a high-profile website without actually representing those entities.

In his video, Echo X urged community members to stay vigilant and avoid sending XRP to questionable addresses simply on the idea of domain labels or speculation: “Again, shout out to the BuildX and ERS community and team and developers … because they’re trying to save lots of you. … Make certain you do your personal research and know what you hold.”

At press time, XRP traded at $3.17

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com