Ripple fintech company based in San Francisco has moved a massive amount of XRP tokens, as detected by prominent DLT service Whale Alert that traces large crypto movements.
Overall, nearly half a billion XRP have been transferred in the past 17 hours. Data provided by Bithomp suggests that Ripple may be selling hundreds of millions of XRP here.
450 million XRP on move from Ripple
The crypto tracker mentioned above spotted three consecutive crypto transfers, carrying 150 million XRP each and 450 million XRP in total. This amount of Ripple-linked tokens is equal to $166.3 million in U.S. dollars.
All three transactions were made by Ripple Labs. Links provided by Whale Alert are invalid, however, a Twitter user shared a link to the XRP-focused platform Bithomp in a comment under each of those transfers.
The funds were moved to three other Ripple wallets, though, so here we have witnessed a large but internal transfer. Two chunks of 131 million XRP from these transactions were immediately sent to U.S.-based Bittrex exchange.
Ripple converts XRP into fiat
Ripple often moves some of the XRP tokens it holds to crypto exchanges in order to support the token's liquidity or to convert some of its XRP to fiat in order to cover its operational expenses.
At the time of writing, the sixth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization value is trading at $0.3703 after a 1% rise in the past 24 hours.
Godfrey Benjamin
Tomiwabold Olajide
Valeria Blokhina