On Friday, Ripple Labs unlocked another set of XRP as a part of its monthly routine leaving an impact on the market. Data shows that 500 million XRP (approx. worth $298 million) got unlocked from Ripple’s escrow account.
The scheduled XRP unlock is expected to create selling pressure among token holders with emerging expectations for the settlement of the long-running US SEC vs Ripple lawsuit. XRP had already recorded a slump of 7% in the last 7 days.
Ripple moved 800M XRP to escrow
On-chain data provided by WhaleAlert shows that 800 million XRP (approx. worth $466 million) were moved to lock in Ripple’s escrow in multiple transactions. The biggest such transaction recorded by the tracker is of moving 500 million XRP (approx. worth $291 million) to the escrow account.
To stabilize the XRP supply, Ripple locked 55 billion XRP (55% of the total supply) into on-ledger escrows. These escrows release one billion XRP every month and any unused XRP would be added to future escrows, ensuring a controlled release into circulation.
Data shows that only 500 million XRP got unlatched in two major transactions this time. The unlock occurred in two tranches of 200 million, and 300 million XRP, respectively.
Whales dump XRP
XRP price dropped by over 7% amid the fresh unlocking event to trade at $0.565. Its 24 hour trading volume took a dip of 10% to stand at $1.8 billion. Ripple’s native token is holding a market cap of $31.58 billion while dealing with regulatory challenges from the US SEC.
WhaleAlert data depicts that over 75 million XRP (approx. worth $43 million) were moved by whale wallets to several crypto exchanges to dump in the last 24 hours. The biggest transaction recorded by the tracker has been of shifting 28 million XRP (approx. worth $16 million) to the crypto exchange Bitso.
XRP prints green on the 30 day index
XRP emerged as one of the best performers in July, beating top cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Solana (SOL). The token recorded a surge of more than 18% in the last 30 days while ETH price dragged by 8%. At the same, BTC and SOL prices jumped by 3% and 9%, respectively.
Its 35% jump in July was backed by high on-chain activity and major whale transactions. However, its social dominance also hit new highs as the token retraced mildly.
The last 5 weeks saw a spike in the number of wallets holding at least 10K XRP. Data shows that over 2,300 such wallets have been registered in this period while the tally reached a six-month high of 279,400 addresses.
