22 February 2024
Ripple has always been subjected to claims of manipulating the price of XRP and its natural growth by selling coins. As the cryptocurrency’s largest holder, Ripple has faced constant criticism about the amount of XRP it holds, with detractors arguing it gives them too much control and influence over the price.
Particularly, there’s been some drama swirling around the altcoin lately and claims that Ripple has been manipulating the market and systematically dumping its large holdings. This has come in light of a large transfer of 60 million XRP tokens from Ripple to an unknown wallet address.
Ripple Accused Of Dumping XRP And Manipulating Market
Whale transaction tracker Whale Alerts recently posted on social media a transfer of 60 million XRP worth $34 million from a Ripple-controlled wallet address into a private address. A further look shows that the private recipient wallet currently holds over 138 million XRP worth $75.5 million, with this same address receiving 80 million XRP from Ripple on February 11.
60,000,000 #XRP (34,088,291 USD) transferred from #Ripple to unknown wallethttps://t.co/zfHG8o0Bbo
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 20, 2024
At the time of writing, Ripple controls about 6% of the current circulating supply. Therefore, it is only natural that large transactions like this from Ripple would generate waves in the market and lead to speculations. Consequently, the large transfers have reignited claims of Ripple selling its holdings amidst ongoing consolidation in the price of XRP.
In addition, debates regarding XRP’s programmatic sales have resurfaced, as history shows this isn’t new to Ripple. According to details shared by a social media user, Jim_Knox, Ripple allegedly delivered XRP to three market makers in 2017 for the purpose of market sales, which resulted in a price suppression of the cryptocurrency during that particular period. Furthermore, recent accusations have taken root of Ripple using what it called the 4t and 6t bots to execute programmatic sales to exchanges.
Ripple CTO Addresses Concerns
Ripple CTO David Schwartz took to a social media thread to address the rumors of price manipulation. An XRP community member had shared a meme suggesting that Ripple’s 4t and 6t bots have always prevented the price of XRP from increasing, keeping it at the $0.50 level.
However, Schwartz pointed out that Ripple has discontinued the programmatic sales of XRP, with the company only selling its holdings through ODL transactions. The ODL transaction method is Ripple’s unique payment solution that offers instantaneous cross-border transactions. On the other hand, concerns regarding the recent large transactions from Ripple to unknown wallets are yet to be addressed, and it all remains speculative at this point.
XRP is trading at $0.5463 at the time of writing, down by 0.50% in the past 24 hours but still maintaining a meager 2% gain in a 30-day timeframe. Recent transaction alerts from Whale Alerts have shown large amounts of XRP leaving private wallets to crypto exchanges, hinting at potential selloffs.