The number of Coinbase XRP cold wallets has continued to shrink over the past few days, recently dropping to just two.
This is according to the latest update from community commentator “XRP Liquidity,” who suggested that each of the two wallets holds 16.4 million XRP. Remarkably, this is a massive drop from the 52 cold wallets the exchange held just three months ago.
Coinbase XRP Cold Wallets Shrink to 2
Data from XRPScan, an XRPL explorer, confirms the recent claims. Specifically, a look at the XRP Rich List indicates that there are currently 2 Coinbase XRP cold wallets, namely Cold 247 and Cold 438.
Recall that the previous report confirmed that as of Sept. 16, there were six Coinbase XRP cold wallets holding 98.81 million XRP. Since then, Coinbase has emptied four of those wallets, with only two left at press time.
Latest Fund Movements
Notably, a quick on-chain investigation by The Crypto Basic indicates that Coinbase emptied two of the four wallets over the past two days. Specifically, Cold 124 moved 16.483 million XRP to the Coinbase (10) hot wallet on Sept. 18 at 01:12 UTC. Meanwhile, just yesterday, Cold 384 sent 16.483 million XRP to the Coinbase (7) hot wallet at 08:14 UTC.
This is consistent with the pattern observed with all other Coinbase XRP cold wallets. However, the hot wallets have always immediately moved out the XRP tokens received.
For instance, after receiving the recent assets, the Coinbase hot wallets swiftly distributed them in outbound transfers to unknown addresses and other platforms such as Stake, Binance, ChangeNow, and Hype, a pattern we highlighted in previous reports.
This suggests that Coinbase may have used the tokens to meet withdrawal requests from customers to these platforms or addresses. At press time, Coinbase (7) holds just over 1 million XRP, while Coinbase (10) only has a balance of 56,992 XRP tokens.
Notably, Coinbase has not made any announcements surrounding the depletion of its XRP reserves, leading to community speculations around the possible reason. While some suggest that whales could be gulping XRP’s available supply, potentially resulting in a supply shock, this remains merely speculative. Coinbase has not responded to a request for information from The Crypto Basic.
