Ripple just moved a massive amount of XRP out of an escrow wallet to three separate wallets owned by the San Francisco payments company.
In total, Ripple transferred 900,000,000 XRP worth about $228 million in three separate transactions. Each transaction settled in a matter of seconds, and the combined cost of the fees involved was less than a penny.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 200,000,000 #XRP (50,329,534 USD) transferred from Ripple Escrow wallet to Ripple
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 3, 2020
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 500,000,000 #XRP (127,162,202 USD) transferred from Ripple Escrow wallet to Ripple
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 3, 2020
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 200,000,000 #XRP (50,731,141 USD) transferred from Ripple Escrow wallet to Ripple
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 3, 2020
The transfers make the funds available for Ripple to sell for cash throughout the month. However, Ripple is expected to sell only a fraction of the funds.
Ripple owns more than half of all XRP in existence and created an escrow program in late 2017 to manage its holdings. The company unlocks one billion XRP from escrow each month, sells a portion and returns the rest back into escrow.
In the first quarter of 2019, Ripple sold a total of $169.42 million worth of XRP on crypto exchanges and to institutions in over-the-counter transactions. In the second quarter, that number grew to $251.51 million.
But after receiving criticism for selling XRP, Ripple reduced its total third-quarter sales to $66.24 million. And in the fourth quarter of last year, Ripple sold $13.08 million worth of XRP to institutions and sold zero XRP on crypto exchanges.
The company has not stated whether it plans to increase or further reduce sales in the first quarter of 2020.
