Reports have surfaced that Chris Larsen, co-founder of Ripple, is facing backlash for transferring a substantial amount of XRP, estimated to be around $175 million. The transfer, involving 50 million XRP, was made between July 17 and July 23, a period that coincided with a surge in the cryptocurrency’s price.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT first brought attention to these transactions on a platform named X. He highlighted that nearly $140 million of the transferred XRP was sent to centralized exchanges or services. Such transfers are typically seen as an indication of an intention to liquidate.
In a response to a social media user, ZachXBT mentioned, “Chris Larsen’s wallets still have over 2.81 billion XRP (worth $8.4 billion).” This revelation led to an uproar, as this amount represents roughly 4.6% of XRP’s total market cap of $183 billion. Rapid movement of such a large portion could potentially exert significant sell pressure on the market.
Larsen is also being lambasted for the timing of his XRP transfers, which coincided with the cryptocurrency hitting a local high of over $3.60. This was followed by a dip to below $3.10, leading many to accuse Larsen of market manipulation.
However, not all opinions were negative. One user, 0xLouisT, argued that Larsen’s actions were aimed at “decentralizing his holdings to longer-term holders to ensure a fair decentralization of the network and supply.”
At the time of reporting, Larsen had not publicly addressed the allegations. Attempts to reach Ripple for a comment remained futile.
Despite the controversy and price dip, Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, deputy CEO of Bitpanda, believes that XRP still has the potential to surpass its 2018 all-time high of $3.84. He emphasized that the future of XRP largely lies in favorable market conditions and a continued shift of capital from Bitcoin to altcoins.
