Crypto whale watchers are following what appears to be Ripple’s first over-the-counter sale of XRP this month: 60,000,000 XRP worth about $19 million sold to an unknown third party.
The San Francisco-based company sells portions of its XRP holdings in over-the-counter deals throughout the year, which means the deals are negotiated in advance at a fixed price.
The latest transfer is part of a massive shuffle of Ripple’s XRP – a delicate dance the company executes each month. Twelve times a year, Ripple releases one billion XRP from its escrow accounts in order to have enough on hand to sell to accredited investors, institutions and crypto exchanges. It then locks the remaining funds back into escrow at the end of the month.
Ripple releases meticulous records of its sales each quarter. Its latest report details $129.03 million worth of XRP sold in the fourth quarter of 2018, with $535.56 million sold across the full year.
“In Q4 2018, three billion XRP was again released out of escrow (one billion each month). 2.4 billion XRP was returned and subsequently put into new escrow contracts.
The remaining 600 million XRP not returned to escrow is being used in a variety of ways to help support the XRP ecosystem, including the RippleNet Accelerator Program and Xpring investments like Securitize.”
Ripple currently owns about 53.5 billion XRP or roughly 54% of the total supply.
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