55 Billion Ripples Locked Away Today, Price Story Changes for XRP

Ripple acted as promised, with an eye to the long run, locking in funds in escrow in a rotation program with a limit on monthly selling.

A transaction to lock away 55 billion XRP coins in escrow time-locked account has been completed. The last contract of 1 billion XRP has been completed, in a process that started in May.

Ripplehas additional funds locked for promotion and for future institutional use. In effect, half of all the XRP to be ever created have been locked away, and the market is restricted to trading around 35 billion XRP.

The news, although expected, gave a boost to the price of Ripple, lifting it to $0.248.

The large overall supply of XRP digital assets has made investors jittery, and the escrow lockup ensures the markets that no unexpected dumping would happen. But since the lockup was mostly expected, traders are still left wondering what direction Ripple would take.

"Well...I guess the escrow was a big deal!#Ripple#XRPup 13.51% to $0.24Can the Billions locked away now take us over $0.30?"

In addition, for 54 months thereafter, one billion XRP coins would be made available for sale or use. As the time period is rather long, Ripple may have increased the adoption with banks. In the case a new system exists, the XRP coin may become more valuable, especially if the network handles even a small part of banks' transaction volumes.

At the end of each month, unspent or unsold XRP would be once again returned to the escrow rotation.

Reddit users are not overly enthusiastic, seeing XRP rise to $0.30, but with enough pressure to bring it down to $0.15, if some traders want to depress the coin. What would be most beneficial for Ripple would be to continue to demonstrate long-term partnerships and real-world application of the digital assets.

In addition, theXRPin escrow may not reach the public exchanges, but instead may be sold directly to partners or banks, or on OTC markets, with little effect on exchange prices.