According to data provided by Whale Alert, Ripple locked 700 million XRP tokens in an escrow on May 1.
Prior to this, two separate transactions were reported, with the company sending 200 million XRPs and 300 million XRPs to unknown wallets.
Ripple routinely released a billion tokens from its escrow on a monthly basis. However, it also tends to re-lock most of the unreleased XRPs back into new escrows.
The company usually keeps a portion of the released tokens in order to fund its operations and provide liquidity for the On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution.
As reported by U.Today, Ripple did not release 1 billion XRP on the first day of the month in March and April. This is also the case this month, with 700 million XRP going back into escrow without a traditional unlocking event.
Those escrows were created from surplus XRP tokens that are in Ripple accounts, meaning that these tokens are not part of the escrow.
Ripple's Q4 report showed that it still owned roughly 38 billion XRP tokens held in its escrow. On top of this, the company itself holds close to 4.5 billion XRPs. Overall, the company still controls nearly half of the token's total circulating supply.
The enterprise blockchain company will likely unlock a billion tokens from escrow on May 3, following the pattern that emerged earlier this year.
XRP price remains in limbo
As usual, Ripple's escrow-related moves cause little volatility. The token has remained flat over the past 24 hours. Notably, it is also up by a mere 0.6% over the past week, according to CoinGecko data. For comparison, Bitcoin is up 3% over the past week.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin