Ripple unlocks 700 million XRP and locks 800 million to keep XRP from dumping

Ripple, the company behind XRP has unlocked 700 million XRP from its escrow wallet, whale transaction tracker Whale Alert shows. The tokens were unlocked in two different transactions, one with 500 million XRP and the second with 200 million XRP.

The 200 million XRP was sent from the company’s escrow wallet to its official wallet while the 500 million XRP was sent from the escrow wallet to an unknown wallet. In all, the transaction was worth almost $440 million at the current exchange rate. 

Interestingly, the company also locked 800 million XRP in its escrow wallet after unlocking the 700 million XRP. This is a routine activity to cut the number of circulating tokens in order to prevent a crash in its price.

This time, the 800 million XRP were moved in three transactions, with 500 million sent to an unknown escrow wallet. Another 200 million XRP and 100 million XRP were sent in two separate transactions to Ripple’s official escrow wallet.

This isn’t the first time such huge transactions have been carried out by Ripple, even though the company has debunked claims that it holds over 60% of the total number of XRP in circulation. The company has also been accused of manipulating the price of XRP which they say they have no control over.

Meanwhile, Ripple is still in court as the SEC claims that the token is a security and not a cryptocurrency. Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse has repeatedly countered this claim and so far says the case is very much in favour of the company with high hopes of winning. 

While the reason for the unlocking of the 700 million XRP remains unknown, it could be to fund the running of the company as Ripple says it only holds some XRP for this purpose. At the moment, XRP is trading at $0.6285 and is up 6.06% in the last 24 hours.

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