Ripple releases 1 billion XRP despite SEC’s lawsuit

One billion XRP tokens have been withdrawn by the Ripple DLT from its escrow account on July 1. These releases of massive XRP amounts have been programmed to take place on the first day of each month. This withdrawal comes amidst Ripple’s legal battle against the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

What you should know

• The SEC has been in a legal battle with Ripple and two of its executives over a case of conducting a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering.
• The two executives in question are Ripple’s CEO, Bradley Garlinghouse and Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman of its board, Christian Larsen.
• Yesterday, the blockchain giant unlocked another billion of the cryptocurrencies affiliated with it. That is equal to over $704 million in fiat.
• Ripple releases 1,000,000,000 XRP in two transfers of 500 million each first of every month.
• Partnership agreements between Ripple and banks, payment companies and other institutions (over 350 of them) often require them to utilize Ripple’s payment network RippleNet and the XRP token as well.
• In the past, many in the cryptocurrency community blamed Ripple for preventing the XRP price from rising by these regular releases of 1 billion XRP. A petition on the change.org portal was launched to demand that Ripple stopped throwing large amounts of XRP into the market.

What this means

Even with the current lawsuit the company is facing, the company continues to run its regular day to day activities and meets up with its objectives and obligations. Ripple has been winning its case against the SEC so far. In its latest win, the judge denied the SEC access to Ripple’s legal advice.

In the meantime, the 7th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has not recovered from the fall below the $1 level and is exchanging hands at $0.63, down 4.14% as of the time of this writing.