Ripple kept 200 million XRP liquid after unlocking its monthly 1 billion tokens within the escrow system. So far, on December 13, the largest XRP Ledger (XRP) holder has already spent 120 million ($73.8 million) out of the total kept this month.
Notably, these unlocks have happened since 2017 because Ripple received 80% of all the XRP tokens created in 2012. After each monthly unlock, the company sells an arbitrary amount of the available tokens, added to its circulating supply.
This is what constitutes XRP’s supply inflation, which directly impacts price projections for the digital asset. Essentially, this inflation is also what mostly funds Ripple’s endeavors and revenue.
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Finbold has covered each month’s sell-off since September, identifying an on-chain spending pattern that was partially repeated in December.
Tracking Ripple’s on-chain XRP trails
Interestingly, the company’s spending crypto wallet address ‘Ripple (1)’ made two payments of 60 million XRP each to ‘rP4X2…sKxv3’. One was made on December 6, and the other on December 12.
This was the same address to receive Ripple’s payments before, which suggests a strong link with the company. Similarly, all the following addresses have already been spotted in previous months under similar conditions.
However, unlike before, the addresses’ owners have spread the transferred amounts in multiple small transactions. Some of them went back and forth from other addresses, which hardened their traceability.
We followed the exact amounts until they reached ‘rhWt2…E32hk’, for a total of 54.075 million received by this address as of writing. An unknown amount was then sent to ‘r4wf7…h4Rzn’, the usual address, before depositing Ripple’s XRP to cryptocurrency exchanges.
Finally, an unknown amount reached previously used exchanges like Bitstamp, Bitso, Independent Reserves, and BTC Markets. The deposits were also made in multiple smaller transactions constantly happening since the beginning of December.
It is certain that the increased selling pressure of newly unlocked tokens impacts order books and XRP’s price. Investors must remain aware of Ripple’s spending and consider the supply inflation impact on their holdings.
Particularly, XRP would trade at $2.39 per token if it reaches the all-time high market cap of $128.498 billion. A loss of $1.45 (37.7%) from the previous price of $3.84 in 2018 facing a similar demand.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
