XRP whales are making major waves, moving over 200 million tokens to start the new year.
According to new data from whale-surveying platform WhaleAlert, 70,000,000 XRP were moved from an unknown wallet to crypto exchange Bitstamp yesterday in two separate transactions.
“40,000,000 XRP (13,485,157 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to Bitstamp…
30,000,000 XRP (10,113,868 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to Bitstamp.”
In addition to the large Bitstamp transactions, WhaleAlert also finds that nearly 150,000,000 XRP were transferred between two unknown wallets on the first day of the new year.
“148,700,000 XRP (50,372,552 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet.”
Both wallets are unidentified and do not have registered usernames on XRPL explorer Bithomp.
In total, the US Dollar (USD) value of the transactions adds up to over $74 million.
Before the New Year’s day transactions, Whale Alert also spotted 500 million XRP tokens being unlocked from escrow on New Year’s Eve.
“500,000,000 XRP (170,074,826 USD) unlocked from escrow at unknown wallet.”
At the same time, Whale Alert reported an additional 400 million tokens being unlocked from escrow in another transaction.
“400,000,000 XRP (136,059,860 USD) unlocked from escrow at unknown wallet.”
XRP is trading for $0.354 at time of writing. The popular altcoin is up 4% over the last 24 hours but down 60% from a year ago.
Ripple Labs has been in a legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for over two years. The SEC sued Ripple in December of 2020, alleging Ripple illegally sold XRP as an unregistered security for years, and that XRP remains a security to this day.
Last week, the SEC made a move to attempt to seal critical documents relating to internal deliberations about speech delivered by former SEC official William Hinman in 2018, when Hinman stated in his official capacity that he believed both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are not securities.
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