Ripple (XRP) controls more than 45 billion tokens, positioning it as the largest active holder of XRP by a significant margin. The company is selling large amounts of XRP in strategic sales, and its activities are still ongoing in February.
XRP’s Locked Tokens
Specifically, over 40.7 billion XRP are locked in escrow, not yet part of the circulating supply. However, Ripple still has access to over 5 billion in liquid assets that the institution could sell at any moment. In February, 1 billion tokens were unlocked, with 800 million relocked for future release. To date, 260 million XRP have left Ripple’s treasury account.
This is 60 million more than this month’s inflation. The extra amount originated from an inactive wallet address that provided funding to the treasury account with 100 million XRP. However, only the treasury address tagged as ‘Ripple (1)’ by XRP scan is disclosed. The company might have other active sales sources not accounted for in this report. Particularly, the 260 million XRP dumped in February equates to $140.4 million at the current price of $0.54. There are still 40 million tokens behind ‘Ripple (1)’s extra 100 million tokens from February 11th.
XRP Price Analysis
This situation could account for some of the recent decline. However, the company can sell billions of liquid holdings at dozens of defined addresses it controls. Also, XRP started trading at $0.50 on February 1st and has shown an 8% increase since the beginning of the month. Nevertheless, it has been trading in a downtrend since its local peak in July 2023 and may now face a short-term pullback following the latest sale on February 20th.
Consequently, it might be difficult to predict the direct impact of Ripple’s sales on XRP’s price by looking at the daily chart. On the other hand, the economic effects of an increase in supply or increased selling pressure can be real, as they affect the bid and could lead to temporary declines if demand is not sufficiently strong.
