Ripple’s first over-the-counter sale of XRP has attracted the attention of many crypto whale watchers as 60,000,000 XRP worth about $19 million were moved to an unknown third party wallet.
The San Francisco-based Ripple sells parts of its XRP holdings in over-the-counter deals during the course of the year, meaning that the deals are negotiated long before the selling date at an established price.
🚨 60,000,000 #XRP (19,038,280 USD) transferred from Ripple OTC Distribution wallet to Unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 5, 2019
This month’s scheduled transfer created a massive wave as a large amount of Ripple’s XRP was shifted to an unknown wallet. Ripple releases one billion XRP on a monthly basis from its escrow accounts to be able to have enough readily available to sell to accredited investors, institutions and crypto exchanges. The remaining funds are locked back into escrow at the end of the month.
Ripple issues each quarter thorough records of its sales. Its most recent report states that $129.03 million worth of XRP were sold in the fourth quarter of 2018, and a value worth of $535.56 million was sold during the entire year.
“In Q4 2018, three billion XRP was again released out of escrow (one billion each month). 2.4 billion XRP was returned and subsequently put into new escrow contracts.
The remaining 600 million XRP not returned to escrow is being used in a variety of ways to help support the XRP ecosystem, including the RippleNet Accelerator Program and Xpring investments like Securitize.”
Currently, Ripple is in control of 53.5 billion XRP, which is estimated to be around 54% of the total supply. XRP is currently being traded at $0.317587, with a circulating supply of 41,432,141,931 XRP.