Recent rumors suggesting the US Treasury's involvement with the XRP Ledger (XRPL) have stirred discussions within the digital asset community. On January 21, several accounts on platform X reported that an address linked to "home.treasury.gov" appeared on the ledger, purportedly establishing trustlines with major financial institutions like Bank of America, BlackRock, and JPMorgan.
However, a comprehensive investigation has raised significant doubts about the legitimacy of this address and its purported affiliations. Community member Echo X (@echodatruth) released an insightful video debunking these claims. He pointed out that the wallet displayed several red flags, including unauthorized tokens masquerading as those from well-known financial entities and holdings of 16,000 XRP transferred by individuals misled into believing the wallet belonged to the Treasury.
Echo X demonstrated how anyone can detect these inconsistencies using XRPL scanners such as XRPScan or Bithomp. Developers from BuildX and the ERS team uncovered that the same address minted various "Bank of America," "BlackRock," and "JPMorgan" tokens, suggesting these were counterfeit.
According to public data from Bithomp, the suspect wallet activated on January 21, promptly setting its domain to the official US Treasury address in an apparent attempt to seem credible.
Further scrutiny revealed that this wallet amassed 1 trillion units of each fake token and placed large-scale sell orders for XRP, even using questionable domain references, such as an invalid "BRICS domain." Echo X emphasized the importance of investigating token origins, which ultimately trace back to this dubious BRICS domain wallet.
The rumor gained momentum partly due to the appearance of a verification tag on XRPScan—a feature generally signifying a Know Your Customer (KYC) process completion. Wietse Wind, founder of Xaman (formerly Xumm), clarified that XRPScan's verification only confirms the submission of personal data, not any official organizational affiliation. According to Wind, "The domain field is public, allowing anyone to input any information, leading to potential misuse of KYC identity verification."
Wind’s insights highlight the limitations of KYC as merely verifying individual identities without guaranteeing any institutional connections. This enables users to mislabel wallets, mint tokens, and link domains falsely, potentially misleading others. In his video, Echo X urged caution within the community, advising against sending XRP to suspect addresses based purely on domain labels: “Commendations to BuildX, ERS, and developers for their efforts to protect you. Conduct your own research to understand your assets fully.”
As of this writing, XRP trades at $3.25.