Ripple had already sold 120 million from the reserved 200 million XRP ($100 million) for its treasury on February 5, following February’s 1 billion tokens unlock. On February 11, the company sold the rest of this month’s supply inflation but with a 100 million XRP surprise.
A dormant wallet address the company controls suddenly became active after nearly two years of inactivity. The account labeled ‘Ripple (52)’ by XRP Scan sent 100 million tokens worth $53.5 million to ‘Ripple (1).’
Notably, the latter is Ripple’s treasury account, used to keep its liquid reserves for the sell-offs.
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Before receiving the unexpected amount, the institution erased its treasury’s balance, selling the remaining 80 million XRP from February’s unlock. This indicates that Ripple could be willing to liquidate part of its holdings besides the usual monthly dumps.
Dormant ‘Ripple (52)’ funded by a 2 billion XRP worth account
In particular, the ‘Ripple (52)’ account was activated in August 2022, receiving 500 million XRP from ‘Ripple (29)’. After spending 75 million on August 29, 2022, the company only used the dormant address again on February 11, 2024.
Interestingly, it still has 325 million available XRP in its liquid balance.
Moreover, Ripple (29) is a billionaire account worth 1.96 billion XRP ($1.04 billion) as of December 2017.
Ripple previous sell-offs
Every month, the company behind the project’s development puts new tokens in circulation. Ripple usually unlocks 1 billion XRP, keeps 200 million to sell, and relocks 800 million for future releases.
However, the largest XRP holder started liquidating some of its previous reserves in the past two months. A larger selling activity than the monthly unlocked amount marked both December 2023 and January 2024.
Therefore, this new behavior could become a pattern, and investors may expect larger token dumps in the following months. Ripple still holds over 5 billion of liquid XRP in multiple accounts.
In closing, these sell-offs directly impact the price of XRP in the market and are a net negative to its investors. Thus, a higher selling activity must be considered when evaluating the risks of trading the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
