A multimillion-dollar security incident involving a Fortress third-party vendor took place in the hours leading to the takeover by Ripple.
Ripple has shared the reason behind its accelerated acquisition of Fortress Trust which took place on September 8. According to the financial technology company, the deal was already on the table, albeit without any urgency to it. However, a multimillion-dollar security incident involving a Fortress third-party vendor took place in the hours leading to the takeover by Ripple. That was what necessitated the need to speed up things as it concerned the acquisition deal, says Ripple.
According to Fortress CEO Scott Purcell, the company lost somewhere between $12 million to $15 million to the said attack. He shared this in an interview with Fortune where he also claimed that a large portion of the lost funds were in Bitcoin (BTC), with small amounts of USD Coin (USDC) and Tether (USDT) also siphoned.
For what it’s worth though, Ripple has been actively involved in Fortress since participating in its seed round last year. So, it was only necessary that it swoop in to rescue Fortress Trust customers.
Ripple also has further investment plans for Fortress Group. According to the firm, this was not its first time speaking to them about a potential acquisition. Last week, Ripple announced that it is currently in talks with the parent company Fortress Blockchain Technologies, as well as FortressPay. A Ripple representative said in part:
“Fortress has been entertaining acquisition conversations for a couple of months now with numerous parties as they look to hone in and grow their payments business (FortressPay).”
Controversy Trails Ripple’s Acquisition of Fortress Trust
Meanwhile, a little controversy has ensued following Ripple’s acquisition of Fortress Trust. In an X (formerly Twitter) statement about its recent security breach, BitGo CEO Mike Belshe said that “Fortress was not forthcoming about what actually did happen”. Belshe also claimed that Fortress may have attempted to downplay what happened by conveniently omitting facts.
However, Fortress co-founder Kevin Lehtiniitty has responded claiming that Belshe’s comments are “misleading”. He even suggested that the commentaries are reactionary after BitGo lost the acquisition deal to Ripple.
“[You] appear to be upset that Scott [Fortress’ CEO] chose to go with Ripple instead of the deal you proposed,” wrote he.
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