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San Francisco-based blockchain behemoth Ripple has again unloaded one billion XRP coins onto the market. This time, it happened during a massive price crash as XRP followed Bitcoin deep down.
Four massive consecutive transactions took place earlier today, but after that, Ripple performed a traditional pivot with the released XRP coins.
1 billion XRP out, 700 million XRP back in
According to the data shared by the prominent crypto tracking service, Whale Alert, Ripple unleashed a billion XRP in four consecutive transfers, containing 400,000,000 XRP, 100,000,000 XRP, 400,000,000 XRP, and 100,000,000 XRP. This amount of popular coins was valued roughly at $1,616,900 in the fiat equivalent at the time of the initiated transactions.
Ripple has been releasing one billion XRP each month since early 2018 as part of its road map to support the XRP liquidity on crypto exchanges and send part of those holdings to its institutional clients who are part of the RippleNet network.
Traditionally, after moving those coins out, Ripple then moves approximately 700,000,000 coins back to escrow to lock them until the next month.
This time, the same thing happened once again – around three hours ago, 400,000,000 XRP and 300,000,000 XRP were locked back. Those XRP chunks were the equivalent of slightly more than one billion dollars. XRP is currently changing hands at $1.59 per coin.
XRP crashes by 17.25% following Bitcoin's drastic plunge
Since Thursday, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has faced a brutal crash of more than 14% as it went down rapidly from the $87,876 zone to the $75,393 level earlier today. Bitcoin pulled the rest of the crypto market along, pushing the prices of major and minor cryptocurrencies deep down.
Bitcoin has not been seen at these low levels for ages already and the crash is believed to be caused by the US president announcing his nominee for the position of the Fed Reserve chairman, Kevin Warsh, known for his hawkish stance. Jerome Powell’s term expires in May. Trump has long been bashing him for refusing to lower the interest rates.
Therefore, XRP collapsed by almost 18%, falling from $1.8 to the $1.54 level. By now, both Bitcoin and XRP have slightly recovered. Bitcoin is trading at $76,965 and XRP is changing hands at $1.59 per coin.
Yuri Molchan
Alex Dovbnya
Arman Shirinyan