In a surprising development making rounds in the crypto sphere, particularly the XRP community, Ripple, XRP’s primary distributor, has locked up about 800 million XRP tokens in escrow in an unusual way.
The recent development came as a shock because of two reasons. Firstly, the token relock occurred a few hours after Chris Larsen’s account was hacked. Also, the release that preceded the token’s relock was unusual as it involved just 600 million tokens, 400 million less than the usual practice.
Taking to X, “Whale Alert,” an advanced blockchain tracker and analytical system, revealed that the transactions, which saw 800 million XRP tokens returned to the escrow, occurred in two different transactions.
According to the tracker’s account, the first transaction saw 500 million XRP tokens worth about $253 million returned to the escrow yesterday at 23:4931 UTC.
Further information revealed that the 500 million XRP were moved from Ripple’s wallets, Ripple 23 to Ripple 11 before the coins were finally locked up in the escrow.
The second transaction, which involved 300 million XRP tokens valued at roughly $151.8 million, was also initiated yesterday at 23:51:11 UTC. However, it involved moving the tokens from a Ripple address labeled Ripple 10 to an escrow account, making the total locked back 800 million XRP.
As usual, Ripple triggered its monthly XRP release. However, the Whale Alert never released a detailed report in that regard.
Nevertheless, we did some research that exposed the number of released XRP tokens from the escrow for February. Based on the investigation, Ripple released only 600 million XRP against the usual 1 billion monthly release.
Bithomp data revealed that the 600 million XRP was released in two different tranches of 100 million and 500 million tokens valued at about $50.5 million and $252.5 million, respectively.
In a nutshell, relocking 800 million XRP is a monthly activity, with the remaining 200 million XRP reserved for running the crypto platform’s monthly expenses. But this month, it was different. Instead of 1 billion XRP, only 600 million XRP was unlocked, while 800 million tokens were locked back in Ripple’s escrow.
Read Also: Ripple Co-founder Chris Larsen: End of SEC Regulation By Enforcement Policy Is Near
One possible reason speculated to have contributed to the unusual XRP release was the recent security breach associated with the accounts belonging to Ripple’s chairman, Chris Larsen.
Renowned crypto on chain Sleuth ZachXBT first reported unauthorized access to the accounts and the theft of 213 million XRP worth about $112.5 million at the time of the incident.
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