Coinbase, America’s largest crypto exchange by trade volume, suddenly saw its XRP balance increase by $7.74 billion worth of tokens.
This is according to a new disclosure from XRPScan, a leading XRPL block explorer. Specifically, on Sept. 8, the cumulative XRP balance controlled by the Coinbase exchange increased by a whopping 5.569 billion XRP tokens worth $7.74 billion.
Coinbase XRP Balance Adds $7.74B
The XRP Rich List Bot, a community-driven automated bot tasked with identifying significant changes in XRP account balances, first identified this change, confirming that Coinbase’s cumulative XRP holdings had suddenly spiked by 4,870% within the hour.
For context, updated data from XRPScan confirmed this change, showing that Coinbase had moved from a low position to become the third-largest XRP-holding entity with up to 5.683 billion XRP tokens, representing about 5.684% of the total XRP supply, within the XRP Rich List.
Interestingly, in terms of largest XRP holders, Coinbase is now only below Ripple and Korean exchange Upbit, which respectively hold 39.481 billion XRP worth $54.88 billion and 6.416 billion XRP valued at $8.91 billion at the current XRP price of $1.39. Coinbase now holds more than double the XRP balance within Binance at 2.608 billion XRP.
Further data also shows that Coinbase boasts the highest number of XRP accounts for any single entity on the Top 10 list. Specifically, the exchange’s 5.683 billion XRP balance is held by 151 accounts, beating Ripple’s 26 accounts by a large margin.
Here’s What Happened
For the uninitiated, a massive increase in an exchange’s balance is not particularly a bullish sign for the token involved, as it could suggest that large investors are moving their balances to the exchange in an attempt to sell off their bags.
However, an increase of this size is rather unprecedented, especially within such a short period of time. This indicates that another factor may be responsible for the recent change rather than a typical exchange inflow event.
Notably, XRPScan confirmed this in a recent disclosure surrounding the development. According to the block explorer, Coinbase did not actually gain 5.5 billion XRP tokens as suggested by its tracking systems.
They instead revealed that the sudden balance change came from a recent identification of Coinbase XRP accounts that their system had failed to index earlier on. These newly identified accounts contain about 5.5 billion XRP, which led to the increase in Coinbase’s XRP balance after they were appropriately labeled.
Responding to the disclosure, XRP community members questioned whether these tokens actually belonged to Coinbase as an entity or to customers who hold XRP balances on the platform. XRPScan noted that the assets likely involve customer balances.
Recall that The Crypto Basic called attention to multiple whale XRP movements carried out by Coinbase last year, which depleted their indexed balance from $2.88 billion to around $98 million. The recent development suggests that these transactions merely involved shuffling of assets within the exchange itself.