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Thanks to data published by popular Whale Alert blockchain sleuth, which traces big cryptocurrency chunks moved by whales and exchanges, word has spread that slightly over 12 hours ago, a blockchain wallet marked as unknown sent several tens of millions of XRP to EU-based crypto exchange Bitstamp.
This happened while the XRP price has demonstrated a mild recovery over the past week, rising 3.43% since Thursday, Oct. 12.
30 million XRP on move
The above-mentioned data source stated that a total of 30,200,000 XRP were sent to Bitstamp by an anonymous whale. Still, XRP-focused analytics platform Bithomp revealed that, in fact, the transaction was initiated by a wallet linked to the San Francisco-based company Ripple Labs founded by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb in 2011-2012 and now run by CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
r4wf7enWPxyHtbizyV7ZHiZi5XgwHh4Rzn is the blockchain wallet address from which Ripple has been shovelling chunks of roughly 29,000,000-30,000,000 XRP to Bitstamp and Bitso exchanges every week over the past two months.
Similar transactions to today's were spotted by Whale Alert last week, the week before last and so on. Sometimes it has sent millions of XRP only to Bitstamp, and sometimes it made two transactions both to Bitstamp and Bitso.
Here's how Bitstamp and Bitso are related to Ripple
Aside from being Ripple's "favorite," these two crypto trading platforms collaborate with the fintech giant on its payments service formerly known as On-Demand Liquidity (ODL), now being rebranded as simply "Ripple Payments," according to the recent message by a top Ripple executive on Twitter.
ODL utilizes XRP for making cross-border payments between crypto exchanges, where first fiat is converted into XRP and then converted into the fiat currency of the receiver. Unlike traditional bank transfers, this method is much faster and cheaper (runs even at weekends) and does not require the use of prepaid accounts in the destination countries.
Whales keep grabbing tonnes of XRP
Meanwhile, large XRP holders, known as whales in the cryptocurrency market, seem to still believe in the rosy future of the coin. Recently, prominent on-chain data aggregator Santiment spread the word about XRP whales and sharks accumulating XRP aggressively.
Now, according to this data, wallets with 100,000 – 100,000,000 XRP in them have accumulated nearly one billion USD in XRP coins – compared to last year, their holdings have increased from $7.16 billion worth of XRP to almost $8 billion in this popular digital currency.
Tomiwabold Olajide
Arman Shirinyan
