Ripple Re-Locks 700 Million XRP Hours After Escrow Unlock

Ripple Re-Locks 700 Million XRP

Ripple released 1 billion XRP from escrow at the start of September, then pushed 700 million of it back into new time-locks within the same day, on-chain transfer records confirm. Three legacy escrow contracts reached maturity and disbursed 500 million, 400 million and 100 million tokens respectively; hours later, two freshly created escrows reclaimed 500 million and 200 million. That sequence leaves 300 million XRP — roughly $422 million at prevailing prices — sitting outside any contractual lock. Ledger analysis shows the coins moved between Ripple-labelled wallet addresses rather than onto trading venues, so the routine monthly release does not amount to a sale. The scale still matters, because the bid side cannot absorb it comfortably: buying interest stacked near the prevailing price totals just $108.2 million, meaning the unlocked tranche is close to four times the size of nearby demand. The market has stayed stable largely because that supply was never actually offered. Should its holders distribute into an already shallow book, the market maker depth under price would be the first cushion to give way. XRP has trodden water near $1.40 through the episode, and participants appear to be treating the cycle as housekeeping rather than a bearish signal — rolling updates sit in our XRP topic hub, and for context on the asset's design, our XRP (XRP) cross-border settlement explainer covers its payment role. Whale-tracking services logged every hop in real time, and none of the labelled destinations matched known exchange wallets, a detail that separates this unlock from the supply shocks that preceded earlier drawdowns. Ripple has also stayed active on-ledger in other ways, including recent RLUSD burn-and-remint operations across its ledger stack.

Volume Fade and Shifting Leadership

While the escrow headline dominated, the deeper signal sits in holder behavior and turnover. The share of XRP supply held for one to two years has climbed from 17.3% in late August to roughly 18.2% today, per HODL wave data — the cohort holding the oldest moving coins is refusing to sell even after the pullback that began August 22. That stillness cuts both ways. Daily volume across all trader cohorts has fallen in every session since the August 22 burst, down to approximately 27.6 million XRP, and August spot volume on Binance had already set the cycle's high before the fade. Momentum adds a caveat: the chart is approaching a golden cross, the point where the 20-day exponential moving average — an average weighted toward recent closes — climbs above the slower 200-day line. The fast average sits at $1.3516 against $1.3540, close enough to trigger on any firm session, though crossovers built on shrinking volume are historically the ones that fail. Leadership metrics repeat the pattern from another angle. Across 21 sessions XRP gained 42.4%, versus 27.0% for Bitcoin and 33.8% for Ethereum, yet over the past 14 days it ranked weakest among 20 large-cap assets against that pair, trailing by 5.7%. Futures positioning mirrors the hesitation. Counting accounts, large traders look confident at 2.86 longs for every short, ahead of the crowd's 2.46 — but weighted by notional size the ratio drops to 2.09, below retail's count. Most large accounts hold bullish positions with limited capital behind them while their short tickets carry the bigger size, and XRP is one of four majors where the funding gap runs negative — conditions that can turn late entrants into exit liquidity if support fails. For a broader read on the segment, our altcoin market tracker follows these rotations daily. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Gate.

$1.4785 Reclaim Decides the Setup

The near-term map comes down to one line. XRP trades around $1.4079, above both moving averages, keeping the recovery structurally alive; a confirmed push to $1.4785, about 5% higher, would clear the level that has capped every rebound since late August — the structure we first mapped in our August breakout coverage. Above that, $1.5832 opens, then the $1.6678–$1.7038 zone around the August peak, roughly a 21% move from spot, while a daily close below $1.3092 invalidates the setup. Anchored in primary records — the Glassnode HODL wave dataset and TradingView's live XRP/USD chart — our read is that this is a stalemate market: supply exists, near-price demand is thin, and whichever side breaks first sets the next leg. Traders weighing an entry can start with our guide on where and how to buy XRP.