The XRP community is abuzz again following a significant movement of tokens between seemingly unknown wallets.
A couple of hours ago, Whale Alert (@whale_alert), a platform that tracks crypto whale transactions on X, reported the transfer of a staggering 443,112,390 XRP.
With an estimated value exceeding $254 million at the time of reporting, this transaction has naturally piqued the interest of investors and enthusiasts.
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Investigating the Source
While Whale Alert initially identified the sender and recipient as unrecognized wallets, further analysis using Bithomp, an XRP blockchain explorer, paints a different picture.
Bithomp reveals that the transaction originated and ended within the same entity. Both wallets belong to Bitvavo, a Dutch cryptocurrency exchange.
A closer look at Bitvavo’s XRP wallets reveals that the sender only has two prior transactions. This wallet sent the massive sum to a newly created XRP address on January 16, effectively activating it. Currently, the 443.11 million XRP remains untouched in this new wallet.
Potential Motives for the Unusual Transfer
The purpose behind this internal transfer remains unclear. It’s worth noting that Bitvavo has a history of shifting large amounts of XRP between internal wallets, though with less regularity than this latest instance. The last documented transaction of a similar scale on the exchange occurred in November 2023.
Another Shocking Transaction
This transfer coincides with a recent false 25 billion XRP transaction from an unknown wallet to Bitfinex, another prominent crypto exchange. The shocking transaction, which amounts to about half of the circulating XRP supply, showed up on Whale Alert’s X account but was deleted soon after.
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A transaction like this to a single exchange would have had catastrophic effects on XRP’s price. However, the Whale Alert team quickly took it down and put out a statement addressing the issue. Whale Alert stated that their systems encountered issues while reading the Ripple node response, which caused their automated system to push out some false posts.
However, a transaction of this scale is sure to create speculation, as one user accused Whale Alert of manipulating the market. If this was market manipulation, it would be similar to the fake news of an approved Bitcoin ETF from October 2023, which swiftly sent Bitcoin to $30,000.
However, this would have a different effect of driving XRP’s price down, letting the manipulators accumulate large XRP holdings and wait for the prices to climb again. While the true motive behind Bitvavo’s 443 million XRP transfer remains a mystery, it doesn’t show any signs of fraudulent activity.
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