One billion XRP moved from Ripple's escrow mistaken for a whale dump

A whale alert that found that one billion XRP was moved from Ripple's wallet on Aug. 1 sent hundreds of Twitter users into a frenzy, as many thought it was a nefarious token dump.

The transaction is a monthly escrow release set by Ripple to regulate the upper limit on new XRP in circulation.

A token dump alarm went off on Wednesday afternoon after a whale-watching Twitter profile spotted that 1 billion XRP was unlocked from one of Ripple's wallets.

According to data from Whale Alert, the transaction, worth over $320 million at current market prices, was unlocked just after midnight on Aug 1.🔓 1,000,000,000 #XRP unlocked from escrow at Ripple Escrow wallet.

The news about one billion new XRP tokens entering the market wasn't well-received by the crypto community, with many Twitter users believing it was a classic "Pump and dump scheme" conducted by Ripple.

They have a 30 year plan to distribute the supply; this is not a "Pump & Dump".#XRP. - Dakota Shipley August 1, 2019.Ripple's escrow mechanism behind the 1 billion XRP transaction.

To introduce predictability to the XRP supply, Ripple created its escrow account.

Every month, a total of 1 billion XRP is released from the escrows to provide an upper limit on the amount of new XRP that can be brought into circulation.

While most of the escrow tokens are set to be sold, Ripple revealed that a portion of the released funds will be used to support projects that work on improving the XRP ecosystem.

It's hard to tell how all of the negative press will affect Ripple in the long-term, but it's clear that XRP suffered some damage from the escrow release.