Ripple Labs releases 1 billion XRP coins from escrow

Ripple Labs has today unlocked 1 billion XRP tokens from escrow as part of the monthly XRP token distribution. Today’s token unlock was done in three different transactions from escrow.

The San Francisco-based fintech company has been at the top of crypto news in the recent past for its ongoing court case with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC). The SEC is out to prove that Ripple Labs erred in selling an unregulated security, the XRP token.

The routine XRP token unlock

The open-source digital asset XRP is pre-mined and has a maximum token supply of 100 billion tokens. However these pre-mined tokens were distributed to Ripple, the parent company of the open-source blockchain XRP ledger (XRPL), and Ripple co-founders and the core team.

Ripple received 80 billion tokens while the company’s co-founders and the core team received 20 billion. To ensure a stable supply of XRP tokens, Ripple locked 55 billion tokens out of the 80 billion tokens it received. It is out of these locked tokens that Ripple has been routinely unlocking.

In today’s token unlock, ripple first unlocked 300 million XRP tokens, then unlocked 200 million tokens, and lastly unlocked 500 million XRP tokens bringing the total amount of XRP tokens unlocked to 1 billion.

Impact of XRP token unlock on XRP price

The law of supply and demand has played out right into today’s XRP token unlock.

The sudden dumping of 1 billion tokens into the XRP token circulating supply has caused a slight drop in XRP price, which has been performing quite well in the past few weeks as the cryptocurrency community looks forward to a win in the ongoing court case. The case is expected to be concluded very soon with some hinting that it could even be determined by the end of July.