Ripples Moves 130,000,000 XRP Amid Price Struggles

On-chain data shows a significant movement of XRP by Ripple as the cryptocurrency’s price grapples with $0.61.

In the past few months, the price of XRP has underperformed against the rest of the market. The recent revelation of a potential $2 billion for Ripple in its lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also did not help XRP’s course in the past week.

Amid the turmoil, on-chain evidence also shows Ripple moving large sums of XRP. On Thursday, a blockchain address associated with the company transferred 130 million XRP ($79 million) to another wallet.

The dynamics surrounding the transfer raise market fear that Ripple may be looking to sell some of its XRP holdings. The transfer involves a sparsely used address that also moved 100 million XRP in the past month, its first transaction since September 2022.

Interestingly, the freshly moved 130 million XRP remains untouched at the time of writing. However, market participants will evidently be monitoring its move and a potential impact on XRP price.

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 130,000,000 #XRP (80,530,918 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallethttps://t.co/yZ7cvF8hbT

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 28, 2024

At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.61. This represents a 2% loss over the last seven days and a mere 4% gain in the past month despite Bitcoin (BTC) soaring to record new all-time highs within this period.

Ripple CTO Admits It Hard Not to Sell XRP

The latest development comes less than two days after Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz admitted that it is almost impossible for the company not to sell XRP.

The CTO noted that the sales of XRP provide a channel for the company to distribute XRP ownership more. The community has always complained about the large amount of the XRP that Ripple holds, a situation Schwartz admits the company can primarily change through sales of XRP.

Evidently, Ripple has to properly address the latest community concerns or risk seeing more stakeholders and investors exiting the project. Earlier this week, popular XRPL software developer and infrastructure provider Dev Null Productions announced it was leaving the network.

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