Ripple Unlocks 1 Billion XRP As Coin Struggles to Impress

Ripple has completed its routine XRP unlocks with 1 billion tokens worth $610 million leaving escrow in the past few hours.

Payments-focused blockchain company Ripple has completed its routine practice of unlocking new tokens at the start of every new month. In the latest unlock, the company released 1 billion XRP coins (approximately $610 million) from its escrow accounts.

Although Ripple does not publicly release information about these unlocks, blockchain tracking service Whale Alert spotted and reported the latest movement.

Ripple performed the escrow release in three transactions with 500 million XRP ($305 million), 400 million XRP ($244 million), and 100 million XRP ($61 million).

For the uninitiated, it is worth mentioning that Ripple’s monthly unlocks form part of the company’s strategy for stabilizing the XRP market. Introduced in 2017, the company locked 55 billion XRP coins to release 1B coins monthly. 

However, additional stabilization efforts mean a significant portion of the newly released coins will not be sold on the market.

Instead, Ripple locks them back into escrow, reducing the number of tokens that enter into circulation. It is expected that Ripple will follow the routine this month and lock a large chunk of the freshly released XRP.

Following the latest unlock, the XRP escrow accounts hold a combined 40.7 billion XRP coins. The balance may quickly rise above 41 billion if Ripple relocks most of the coins as expected and only sells a smaller portion to fund its operations.

XRP Struggles to Impress

The latest escrow unlock has had little to no impact on the XRP price, as many market participants are already aware of the monthly event. The crypto asset has only seen a 1.4% drop on the day, aligning with broader market conditions.

However, the unlocks come within a timeline during which XRP generally struggles to impress. Over the past month, the cryptocurrency gained a paltry 0.17%, according to CoinMarketCap data. 

XRP is trading for $0.615 at the time of writing. The token remains the sixth largest crypto asset by market capitalization, having lost its earlier fifth spot to an outperforming Solana (SOL).