Ripple Unlocks $225 Mln Worth of XRP, Crypto Community Fears Another Price Drop

According to Twitter account "Whale Alert," which keeps a close eye on mammoth-sized crypto transactions, blockchain monolith Ripple has unlocked $225 more worth of XRP from its escrow wallet.

🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 1,000,000,000 #XRP (225,092,032 USD) unlocked from escrow at Ripple Escrow wallet

Tx: https://t.co/mnDgiG81ln

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 1, 2019

As expected, the crypto community went berserk, and some Twitteratis jumped to conclusions and didn't shy away from the dirty word "scam."               

It's that time of the month 

Ripple is often slammed as a centralized project because it controls 55 percent of XRP's total supply. Back in December 2017, the company made an announcement about unlocking 1 bln XRP from a series of its escrows on a monthly basis. This release schedule assures XRP holders that Ripple wouldn't sell all of its holdings on the open market simultaneously, which would ultimately crash the price of their native token.         

Ripple tends to sell a fraction of XRP tokens that are released on a monthly basis. It was deemed responsible for inflicting selling pressure on the third-biggest cryptocurrency, which is down 35 percent in 2019 (for comparison, Bitcoin is still up by more than 90 percent).

Recently, crypto influencer BitLord criticized Ripple for dumping tokens on their community to acquire real-life businesses.  

Ripple's side of the story

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse shrugged off these accusations, claiming that the company, as the biggest stakeholder, was the most interesting party in the success of its token. He also explained that these sales were necessary for developing Ripple's ecosystem.       

Indeed, according to the company's Q3 report, it plans to adopt "a more conservative" approach to its monthly sale. In Q3, Ripple sold only $66.24 mln worth of XRP, which represents a 73.7 decrease compared to the previous quarter.