Ripple Sold 841M+ XRP in Q1 2024, Now Holds 44.9B With 40B in Escrow

Ripple now holds 44.9 billion XRP, with 40 billion currently in escrow, having sold over 841 million tokens in Q1 2024.

The U.S.-based financial technology company disclosed this in its latest XRP market quarterly report. The report spotlighted multiple developments around XRP and the XRP Ledger in Q1 2024, including an increase in transactions, a decrease in transaction cost and the launch of XLS-30 for AMM functionality.

The Q1 2024 XRP Markets Report is out now: https://t.co/rd2kKQMNvR

Notable market developments in Q1 include:
🇺🇸 Continued U.S. demand for BTC Spot ETFs
📶 CEX & DEX volume growth
⚖️ Key regulatory & legal updates
🔗 Technical blockchain upgrades including AMM on the #XRPLedger

— Ripple (@Ripple) May 17, 2024

Ripple Sold 841M+ XRP in Q1 2024

Ripple confirmed that it held 45.78 billion XRP as of Dec. 31, 2023. However, this figure dropped below the 45 billion mark at the end of Q1 2024, depleting to 44.94 billion XRP as of March 31, 2024. This balance represents 44.94% of XRP’s max supply, marking the first time Ripple holds below 45% of XRP’s supply.

The updated figure indicates that Ripple sold off 841.5 million XRP in the first quarter of the year, worth a whopping $440.6 million at the current unit price of $0.5236. Nonetheless, this figure represents a 16% drop in Ripple’s XRP sales from 1.006 billion XRP recorded in the previous quarter.

Of the current balance of 44.94 billion, 40.1 billion tokens reside across 12 escrow wallets. This represents locked assets subject to escrow releases every month. However, latest data sourced by XRPL explorer XRPScan confirms that this figure has dropped to 39.7 billion XRP at reporting time, with Ripple having sold 400 million XRP across April and May.

Meanwhile, Ripple’s report indicates that the firm holds 4.84 billion XRP as spendable balance out of the 44.94 billion total holdings as of March 31. This suggests that the payment technology company’s spendable balance dropped by 237 million XRP in the last quarter.

Ripple’s Continuous XRP Sales

Recently, Ripple’s XRP sales have triggered concerns among a few market participants, who believe these sales contribute to XRP’s persistent underperformance.

However, Ripple CTO David Schwartz has debunked these claims. Others have echoed Schwartz’s sentiments, stressing that XRP’s inflation rate is lower than other assets like Solana, but these have performed remarkably well.

Responding to community inquiries, Schwartz emphasized that Ripple has no other option but to continuously decrease its XRP holdings. The Ripple CTO confirmed that the firm needs to drastically decrease the amount of XRP it holds. He noted that options such as burning the tokens would not have any positive impact on price, citing the Stellar case.

Source