Ripple recently witnessed the release of 500 million XRP from escrow for February 2025, but the latest escrow unlock had nothing to do with XRP’s latest crash.
Market tracking resource Whale Alert called the public’s attention to the recent escrow release, which involved only half of the typical figure. For context, Ripple observed the release of 500 million XRP tokens from escrow for the month of February 2025.
Ripple Escrow Releases 500M XRP for February 2025
On-chain data confirms that the escrow unlock occurred across two transactions yesterday, Feb. 2, a deviation from the usual timing. The first transaction released 100 million XRP worth $283 million to the Ripple (26) wallet address at 14:20 UTC yesterday.
🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 100,000,000 #XRP (283,897,724 USD) unlocked from escrow at unknown wallet
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 2, 2025
Meanwhile, the second and more substantial transaction followed 15 minutes later, involving the release of 400 million XRP valued at $1.135 billion at 14:35 UTC. Both transactions, triggered by OffEscrower, amounted to a total of 500 million XRP worth $1.418 billion.
Notably, this pattern deviates from the 1 billion XRP the system typically releases on the first day of each month. Such deviation also occurred in the first month of the year, January 2025, as Ripple only unlocked 500 million XRP on Jan. 1 and then promptly relocked the tokens.
Another interesting deviation was the firm’s decision to lock up 700 million XRP this month, a few hours before the latest release. Specifically, Ripple locked up 430 million XRP in escrow at 01:23 UTC and then proceeded to lock up another 270 million XRP at 01:25 UTC yesterday, before the release of the 500 million XRP for this month.
Essentially, the payments firm relocked 700 million XRP in escrow while observing the release of 500 million XRP from the escrow system, leading to a deflationary development, with 200 million removed from circulation. Despite this, XRP’s price has not fared well in the past few days.
XRP Gives up $3 Amid Crash
After consolidating at the lower ends of the $3 region since Jan. 15, XRP eventually relinquished this psychological mark on Feb. 1. The asset has so far witnessed three consecutive days of losses since Jan. 31, collapsing by 18.53% within this period, with the weekend delivering most of the losses.
Discouragingly, the downtrend has spilled into this new week, with XRP down 10.30% today alone, now trading for $2.31. XRP initially slumped to a new yearly low of $1.76 earlier today before immediately bouncing back above the $2 psychological region.
While this downturn coincides with Ripple’s escrow release, it has absolutely nothing to do with the monthly development. Instead, XRP’s price crash is due to a larger trend across the broader crypto market, with Bitcoin (BTC) recently slumping to the $91,000 mark, its lowest price since Jan. 13.
Besides XRP, other altcoins have also reacted terribly to this market crash. For instance, Dogecoin (DOGE) is down 20.51% over the past 24 hours, while Cardano (ADA) has crashed 23.31% within the same timeframe. A Reuters report attributes the crypto crash to the trade war triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariff hikes on certain imports.
