Ripple Labs have unleashed up to 1 billion XRP tokens from its escrow wallet into the cryptocurrency market.
The famous fintech and blockchain company conducted two separate transactions of 500 million tokens each a few hours ago.
Additionally, the 1 billion tokens are equivalent to $423 million, which means each XRP token is worth $0.42 at release.
Ripple’s Long-term Plan to Release 55 Billion Tokens
This recent development is part of Ripple’s goal to release 55 billion XRP locked in escrow a couple of years ago.
The blockchain company has consistently released at least a billion tokens monthly since 2017.
However, Ripple’s plans for the XRP unlock program caused fears for many XRP investors when it was announced. They thought that the price of the token would be primarily affected.
The concerned XRP investors filed a petition on Change.org to stop the move.
XRP Price Drops 2.5% After Unlocking Tokens
Contrary to investors’ fear, the token price remains slightly unaffected by the constant cryptocurrency release from Ripple’s escrow account because the company created measures to keep the price in check.
The company constantly locks back a large portion of the cryptocurrency moments after unleashing the tokens into the market.
Like previous months, Ripple usually locks back 800 million XRP of all newly released Ripple cryptocurrency while adding 200 million to the circulating supply of the token.
The current collapse of the crypto market and ongoing lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission prove to be a stumbling block to Ripple locking back newly released tokens.
XRP is currently down 2.5% in the last 24 hours, and it is trading around $0.419. However, it is not clear whether the coin’s value is down due to the 1 billion tokens released in the market because the entire cryptocurrency market is also down by 1.1% in the last 24 hours.
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