U.Today - According to reporting, Ripple sent back 800 million XRP, worth about $492.5 million, to its escrow system after unlocking 1 billion XRP, worth about $610 million, on Jan. 1, 2024. This action is part of Ripple's monthly routine of releasing and relocking a fixed amount of XRP from its escrow.
Per crypto data tracker Whale Alert, the XRP move back to the Ripple escrow was done in two transactions.
In the first transaction, Ripple relocked 500,000,000 XRP worth $308,354,921 in its escrow. The second transaction returned to was 300,000,000 XRP valued at $184,222,995. This comes after Ripple performed its monthly unlock of XRP tokens from its escrow.
released 1 billion XRP from its escrow earlier today in three transactions of 500 million, 400 million and 100 million XRP, according to Whale Alert.
Ripple's holdings are divided into two categories: XRP that it presently owns in its wallets and XRP that is subject to on-ledger escrow lockups that will be released monthly for the next 39 months.
Ripple does not have access to the latter category of XRP until the escrow releases it to Ripple monthly. The vast majority of this XRP released is returned to escrow.
The Ripple escrow system was launched in December 2017 to ensure predictability and stability of the XRP market. This escrow mechanism is planned to last until all 55 billion XRP have been released.
At the time of writing, XRP was trading at $0.62, down 0.21% in the last 24 hours, and had a market capitalization of $33.56 billion, making it the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.