On April 1, San Francisco-based blockchain behemoth Ripple Labs has withdrawn another billion XRP tokens from escrow, according to data from Whale Alert.
In the meantime, CoinMarketCap has returned XRP to the top 10 list of digital currencies after a brief absence.
Ripple withdraws one billion XRP
Crypto tracker Whale Alert has shared that, approximately 10 hours ago, Ripple Labs unleashed another billion XRP from escrow as it is April 1 today and such withdrawals have been taking place on the first of every month for the past few years.
The fiat equivalent of this XRP amount is roughly $575.6 million.
As a rule, Ripple puts around 800 million coins back into escrow and used the rest of the sum to cover the company's operational expenses, investing in promising projects and supporting XRP liquidity on the market.
However, Ripple Labs now has an extra category of costs—paying the legal team to defend Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen in court against the U.S. securities regulator.
Even though multiple exchanges, including such giants as Coinbase, Bittrex and Binance US, have suspended XRP trading, the crypto heavyweight keeps withdrawing XRP from escrow on a regular basis.
Ripple, Bitso and Coinbase shift 122.3 million XRP
Whale Alert also shared that other major players have also shifted a substantial aggregate amount of XRP: 122.3 million coins, worth $69,763,364.
The Coinbase giant has shifted 61,999,980 XRP between its wallets (that is $34,196,876), despite the fact that it has suspended XRP trading and has been sued for collection fees on "illegal XRP sales" by the SEC.
The Ripple giant has wired 10 billion XRP to its ODL partner in Mexico, Bitso, the largest crypto exchange in Latin America which is also spreading Ripple's On-Demand Liquidity tech around the region.
Among other participants in these transactions are major crypto platforms Binance and BitGo.
Alex DovbnyaXRP disappeared from CoinMarketCap on April Fools'
Earlier today, Twitter user and XRP fan @MackAttackXRP shared a screenshot showing that major Binance-owned crypto data aggregator CoinMarketCap had removed XRP from its top 10 scale (and top 100 too, it seems) as an April Fools' joke.
Later on, the XRP token was put back in seventh place. As of press time, XRP is trading at $0.569.
Arman Shirinyan
Alex Dovbnya
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov