Ripple just released one billion XRP worth $173.5 million from escrow for the month of April.
Whale Alert tracked the move in real time, which happened in two separate 500 million XRP transactions.
Ripple holds more than half of the total supply of XRP. In December of 2017, the company pledged not to sell all of its tokens at once, locking up 55 billion XRP into a series of cryptographically secured escrow accounts.
Ripple then set up a schedule to release one billion XRP each month, sell a portion, and return the rest back into escrow.
Although it’s hard to trace Ripple’s sales on the ledger, the company moved 74 million XRP worth $12.6 million from one of its over-the-counter wallets to a wallet of unknown origin on Monday, which may be a sale to a third party.
Ripple has dramatically reduced the amount of XRP it’s selling in recent months. In the fourth quarter of last year, Ripple sold $13.08 million in XRP, compared to $66.24 million in the third quarter.