On August 9, Ripple Labs released 1 billion XRP tokens from escrow, worth about $3.28 billion at current prices. The release was split into three parts:
• 500 million XRP went to an unknown wallet
• 400 million and 100 million XRP were sent to Ripple-controlled addresses
Ripple has been doing this monthly since 2017 to help keep XRP liquid in the market while controlling how much new supply is released. If Ripple doesn’t use all the tokens, it usually puts the leftovers back into escrow for future use.
Big releases like this can affect XRP’s price, depending on how fast the tokens are sold or moved. Ripple hasn’t said why it made this specific allocation or whether any of the tokens will be returned to escrow later this month.
