XRP Defies $1.38 Billion Ripple Unlock as Institutional Demand Rewrites the Market

Ripple’s most recent monthly XRP unlock brought back an attention-grabbing headline. One billion unlocked tokens from Ripple’s escrow release on September 1. This time, however, XRP managed to hold its ground, perhaps reflecting a huge shift.

The release followed Ripple’s escrow timetable, established in 2017, when the company locked 55 billion XRP in time-locked contracts, and up to a billion XRP was released each month. The amount released, however, does not necessarily reflect the amount being put into circulation.

Historically, Ripple returned a sizable fraction of unlocked tokens to escrow and used the remainder for operational expenses, institutional sales, and market liquidity.

Thus, unlocks have lost their ability to surprise traders, as the frequency of unlocks is known in advance based on the fixed interval between unlocks and Ripple’s pattern of re-escrowing.