According to wallet tracking service Whale Alert, 50 million XRP tokens (roughly $29.1 million at current prices) were recently transferred from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen to an unknown wallet.
Larsen's wallets typically remain inactive. This is the first time that such a transaction has taken place since September 2020. On Sept. 22, 2020, a whopping $115 million worth of XRP was transferred from Larsen's personal wallet.
Gamza KhanzadaevEarlier this year, hackers stole a total of $112 million from Larsen's wallet. The Ripple co-founder managed to freeze a significant portion of the stolen funds shortly after the incident after cooperating with law enforcement.
Alex DovbnyaThe Ripple co-founder clarified that this was merely an isolated incident, adding that the company's wallets were never compromised. Some cryptocurrency community members initially assumed that the company itself lost its crypto.
According to Forbes, Larsen received 5.19 billion XRP tokens as one of Ripple's co-founders. Apart from that, he also owns a sizeable 17% stake in the San Francisco-headquartered company. In early 2018, Larsen became one of the richest people on the planet thanks to XRP's success. Forbes estimated that his personal net worth had reached a staggering $59 billion because of paper gains stemming from his XRP holdings. After XRP's price plunge, he ended up with only a fraction of that sum. That said, he remains on the coveted list of crypto billionaires with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion.
The XRP token is trading at $0.58, according to data provided by CoinGecko. The recent transaction involving Larsen's personal wallet apparently had little market impact.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov