Ripple Locks 800M XRP After Releasing Only 600M XRP

To boost investor confidence in XRP, Ripple locked 800 million XRP in escrow, coinciding with the days after its chairman Chris Larsen’s personal account suffered a hack.

Leading crypto payments company Ripple has locked a substantial amount of XRP in its escrow accounts.

800M XRP Locked in Escrow

In a startling development, Ripple locked a whopping 800 million XRP worth $404 million in two transactions. According to data from Whale Alert, Ripple first locked 500 million XRP yesterday at 23:49 (UTC).

🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 500,000,000 #XRP (253,040,491 USD) locked in escrow at #Ripplehttps://t.co/DREvYrS4IS

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 1, 2024

Further insight from XRP Scan shows that the 500 million XRP were first moved from one of Ripple’s wallets, ‘Ripple 23’, to ‘Ripple 11’ before the company finally locked the funds in escrow.

For the second transaction, the leading crypto payments company locked 300 million XRP coins in escrow.

🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 🔒 300,000,000 #XRP (151,820,893 USD) locked in escrow at #Ripplehttps://t.co/muD0akaxNq

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 1, 2024

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The 300 million XRP coins were locked in escrow from another Ripple address labeled ‘Ripple 10’.

Ripple Unlocks 600M XRP From Escrow

Ripple did release XRP from escrow for this month. But interestingly enough, Whale Alert did not index the escrow releases.

According to The Crypto Basic search, Ripple unlocked 600 million XRP from its escrow accounts. Unlike previous months when Ripple unlocked 1 billion XRP on the first day of the month, The Crypto Basic spotted the release of only 600 million XRP on February 1.

According to Bithomp data, the 600 million XRP were unlocked in two tranches- 100 million ($50.5 million) and 500 million XRP ($252.5 million), respectively.

Potential Reasons Behind the Action

The development surprised many investors, given that Ripple did not first unlock the routine 1 billion XRP coins before re-locking the substantial amount of XRP in escrow.

For context, Ripple usually unlocks 1 billion XRP from its escrow accounts on the first day of every month. Shortly after the unlock, Ripple usually re-locks 80% of the total sum (800 million) XRP in escrow, while the remaining 20% (200 million) XRP is moved to the company’s spending address ‘Ripple 1’ to cater to its monthly expenses.

Ripple opting to lock 800M XRP in escrow after releasing only 600 million XRP indicates that the crypto payments firm is committed to bolstering investors’ confidence in the coin.

Ripple Chairman Suffers Security Breach

Many suggest that another factor that could have influenced this decision is the recent security breach on Ripple chairman Chris Larsen’s personal account. However, this remains speculative, as there have been no official confirmations.

Earlier this week, famous crypto on-chain sleuth ZachXBT reported that hackers gained unauthorized access to Ripple’s wallets. He said the attackers transferred 213 million XRP ($112.5 million) from the address to multiple exchanges, including Binance.

The development sparked panic among investors who feared that a substantial amount of XRP could be dumped in the market. Reacting, Larsen noted that the hack did not involve Ripple’s wallets but his personal account.

However, Larsen said his team quickly identified the issue and contacted the exchanges that received the stolen funds to freeze the assets. Furthermore, he disclosed that they had already contacted law enforcement agents regarding the incident.

XRP Recent Performance

It bears mentioning that XRP has not impressed many investors compared to other coins. Recall that over the past three months, when other crypto assets enjoyed double-digit gains, XRP lost 18% of its value.

The coin has been trading around $0.5 in the past week, leaving many investors frustrated. At press time, XRP was changing hands at $0.505, up 2.3% on the daily charts.

Despite its daily gain, XRP is down 8% and 20.4% in the past 14 and 30 days, respectively.