Ripple, the Silicon Valley tech company behind the creation of the XRP token, recently sent a significant amount of XRP to the cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp and to an unknown wallet. The total was up to a quarter of a billion dollars and it was sent in two transactions. The largest transaction was done through OTC trading and it was a transfer of $136 million. This amount was sent to the cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp. Whale Alert posted the transaction on Twitter:
“About 463,420,929 #XRP which equates to 136,324,998 in USD was transferred to Bitstamp from Ripple.”
Shortly after, another transaction was made from a known Ripple wallet to a mystery wallet. This one was worth $114 million in XRP.
What Do these Large Fund Transfers Mean?
Ripple owns up to 60% of the total XRP in circulation. A large percentage of that is locked in escrow. From time to time, the company sells XRP to institutional investors and exchanges. It’s possible that this large transactions was a sales deal from XRP to an another entity. It could also mean that Ripple was moving funds between its own wallets. Interestingly, both transactions cost less than a penny in fees.
XRP (XRP) Price Today – XRP / USD
| Name | Price | 24H % |
|---|---|---|
 | $0.00 | -0.80% |
Recently, Ripple released its report which detailed how much, in XRP, the company sold during the fourth quarter of the year and throughout the entire year. The report showed that the company sold a total of $535.56 million in XRP throughout the year 2018. However, it indicated that there was a 25% drop in sales between the third and fourth quarter of the year.
Institutional investors accounted for about $171 million out of the total figure but $363 million came from third-party market marker sales. In the last quarter, Ripple sold only $129.03 million worth of XRP. Experts say that the decline from $163.33 in Q3 to $129.03 in Q4 may have been caused directly by a decline in institutional interest. A licensed money transmitting arm, Ripple II sold only $40.15 million in XRP in Q4 this is low compared to the $98.06 million it sold in Q3.
According to the report, there was a boost in XRP sales through market markers in Q4 when compared to Q3. In the third quarter, the total programmatic sales was $65.27. In the fourth quarter, the figure increased to $88.88 million.
XRP’s Trading Volume And Utility Increased
Even if there was a drop in XRP sales in Q4, there was an increase in the trading volume of the second largest cryptocurrency per market capitalization. The volume increased by 44% between Q3 and Q4.
The report recorded an increased utility of the XRP token. Many cryptocurrency exchanges listed the token throughout the year 2018. Right now, 100 platforms have listed the XRP token. In the fourth quarter of 2017, only 50 exchanges had XRP listed. The token has also found more utility as a base pair. Binance and eight other exchanges have listed XRP as a base pair. Ripple’s xRapid technology was launched in October 2018 and two notable traditional institutions quickly signed up to use the technology: Mercury FX, Catalyst Corp.
Do you think there will be a boost in XRP sales to institutions in the first quarter of 2019?
