Ripple recently unlocked a billion tokens (roughly $3.28 million at the time of the transaction) from its escrow wallet.
The unlocks took place with three transactions reported by Whale Alert on Aug. 9.
The company typically uses the released tokens for funding on-demand liquidity (ODL) usage, partnerships and acquisitions as well as different ecosystem developments.
The majority of XRP tokens released on a monthly basis get relocked into escrow. Ripple ends up using roughly 200-350 million tokens per month.
Since January 2018, Ripple would typically unlock a billion tokens on the first day of the month. However, it started deviating from this standard practice earlier this year. In March, the company moved to create new escrows from its holdings and then released tokens at a later date. The same pattern was observed in the following months.
Earlier this week, there was some speculation within the XRP community about the August unlock due to highly unusual timing. A total of 700 million tokens got locked at the start of the month, but the company did not release any new tokens from escrow wallets.
Some even assumed that August 2025 could become the first month without any unlocks since the introduction of Ripple's escrow schedule in late 2017. "A bit intriguing if all of a sudden just stopped. Speculation would rise," a social media user tracking Ripple-linked wallets said on the X network.
According to data provided by XRPscan, the leading blockchain explorer for XRP Ledger, there are still roughly 35.6 billion tokens.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team