Ripple Moves Out 250M XRP as Price Plunges Below $0.50 

On-chain data from Whale Alert shows Ripple has moved a substantial amount of XRP to an unlabeled address, as the cryptocurrency’s price trades below $0.50.  

The transaction, which occurred yesterday, saw a blockchain address affiliated with Ripple move 250 million XRP ($122.5 million) to an unknown wallet. 

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 250,000,000 #XRP (122,504,132 USD) transferred from #Ripple to unknown wallethttps://t.co/hSvEwAqyjY

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) June 20, 2024

Details About the Wallets 

Despite Whale Alert tagging the recipient wallet as unknown, data from Bithomp shows Ripple activated it on October 2, 2023. Before the recent transaction, the recipient address has been active, indulging in a series of transactions. 

This month alone, the recipient address has moved out 219,666,521 (219.66 million) XRP to multiple wallets. The latest outflow from the address, containing 50,000 XRP, occurred less than an hour after it received 250 million XRP from Ripple. 

Conversely, the wallet has also received 400 million XRP from Ripple this month, including the freshly indexed 250 million inflow. At press time, the address boasts a total balance of 270,959,000 (270.95 million) XRP.  

Meanwhile, the sending wallet now has a balance of 275.99 XRP following the 250 million XRP outflow.  

David Schwartz Addresses Concerns About Ripple XRP Sales

Notably, a transaction of this magnitude usually raises concern that Ripple might intend to sell some of its XRP holdings, thus mounting further pressure on the coin’s price. 

Investors have accused the company of negatively impacting the price of XRP through its continuous sales. For the uninitiated, Ripple releases 1 billion XRP from escrow monthly, with the company re-locking 800 million and using the remaining 200 million to cater to its expenses.  

Consequently, several investors have blamed XRP’s underperformance on Ripple’s continuous sales and hefty holdings. For instance, Dev Null Productions left the XRP Ledger ecosystem in March, citing Ripple’s unending XRP sales as the reason behind their exit. 

Reacting to this allegation, Ripple CTO David Schwartz claims it is almost impossible for the company to avoid selling XRP. According to him, Ripple has limited options to reduce its hefty XRP holdings, emphasizing that the company relies on sales as the primary approach to doing this.  

Currently, XRP is trading at $0.4894. This represents a 1.03% decline over the past day and an 8.33% loss in the monthly charts. Like many assets, the recent downturn did not spare XRP, causing the coin to plunge from a 30-day high of $0.5423 to a monthly low of $0.4636.