Leading crypto tracker Whale Alert has indexed a fresh transaction featuring the movement of a substantial amount of XRP from a Ripple wallet.
Data from Whale Alert shows that Ripple transferred 100M XRP, worth $52.81M, to an unknown wallet. Notably, the transaction occurred yesterday at exactly 16:07 (UTC).
🚨 🚨 🚨 100,000,000 #XRP (52,815,512 USD) transferred from #Ripple to unknown wallethttps://t.co/CmwVPaSKWG
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) April 24, 2024
Funds Shuffle Between Ripple Wallets
Although Whale Alert did not disclose the identity of the receiver, on-chain scrutiny carried out by The Crypto Basic suggests that Ripple also owns the recipient wallet.
According to our findings, Ripple activated the recipient address, which currently holds 145.11M XRP, on October 27, 2021. Shortly after receiving the 100M XRP, the recipient address moved 50.02M XRP to two unknown wallets.
Meanwhile, the latest transaction comes over a week after Ripple first sent 100M XRP to the same address on April 14, 2024. Following the latest transaction, Ripple has sent a total of 200M XRP to the address this month.
A Part of Ripple’s Escrow Funds
It is noteworthy that the 200M XRP coins were sent from one of Ripple’s addresses, which constantly receives funds from the company’s escrow accounts.
The address last received XRP via ‘escrow execution’ on March 1, featuring 500M XRP. Since then, Ripple has moved almost all the funds in the wallet, with its balance now standing at 275.99 XRP as of press time.
For context, Ripple typically releases 1B XRP from its escrow accounts on the first day of each month. To shield XRP from massive volatility after each unlock, the company locks back 800M coins in escrow, while the remaining 200M XRP are used to cover the company’s legitimate expenses.
Ripple Escrow System Experiences Anomalies
In recent times, Ripple’s escrow system has witnessed anomalies. The system has been observed to release less than the programmed 1 billion XRP for most of 2024.
Such development occurred in February, March, and April of this year. For instance, Ripple’s escrow system released 500 million XRP on April 1 and another 500 million XRP by April 12. Despite this anomaly, Ripple still put 800 million XRP back in escrow on April 1.
It is interesting to note that Ripple moved the first 100 million XRP stated earlier, two days after the second tranche of XRP was released from escrow. In addition, the most recent 100 million XRP shuffled by Ripple, as indexed by Whale Alert, occurred 10 days later.
