Hackers cause damage to the crypto world, but on January 14-15, Bitfinex prevented an XRP attack, and saved itself, XRP, USDT from a big loss.

An unsuccessful attack

     On January 14-15, Bitfinex faced a "Partial Payments Exploit," this is a tool in which is XRP ledger is used to send only a partial amount but it reads full amount.  Hacker send a small part of XRP in an attempt to withdraw a massive amount (over 25.6B $XRP). However, Bitfinex successfully prevented it due to its 'delivered amount' data field.

XRP and Bitfinex saved

     There are approximately 54B $XRP in circulation, and the hacker attempt took 25.6B $XRP which is almost half of the total $XRP assets. If that attempt had succeeded, Bitfinex would have had to pay for the loss out of its own pocket, and the XRP market would have been affected after the attack, because XRP's tool was used for it.

USDT also saved

     Bitfinex's parent company iFinex also owns Tether, the issuer of USDT stablecoin. USDT has long been in controversy over heavy minting. If that attack was successed, Bitfinex would have had to pay compensation, but then any mining of USDT would have been considered false compensation, which could have depegged USDT in the crypto market.