Ripple's $1.5 billion escrow stands out as XRP turns 13​​ originally appeared on TheStreet .

As part of its monthly practice, Ripple has recently escrowed nearly 680 million XRPs (approximately $1.5 billion) into escrow wallets, as monitored by Whale Alert's on-chain activity tracking.

The two notable transactions on June 1 consisted of a $1.03 billion XRP transfer (470 million XRPs) and a $437 XRP transaction (200 million XRPs); both token transactions have amounted to Ripple's traditional way they restricting supply. Interestingly, XRP Ledger's native token, XRP, has just turned thirteen years old as of June 2, 2025.

The purpose of these escrows is to provide predictability and transparency for the XRP circulating supply. Ripple utilizes approximately 1 billion XRP each month from a portion of the escrow to meet operational needs, such as institutional partnerships, and returns the remainder to escrow.

However, analysts typically consider large re-escrow events as neutral to bearish in the short term, as they inadvertently create recent fear and selling pressure when analyzing a gigantic transfer of escrowed tokens.

According to reports , XRP's last one billion escrow transaction resulted in a significant price drop of approximately 24% in XRP price.

At press time, XRP is trading at $2.14 , down by over 7% in the last 24 hours, as per Kraken's price page. This aligns with the bearish sentiment following escrow transfers.

XRP's centralization doubts persist

According to XRPScan , Ripple holds a sizable portion of the total XRP supply. Ripple holds control (whether through escrow or direct access) over at least 36–39% of XRP, which is consistent with earlier estimates of 45–55% ownership (including both accessible but unescrowed Ripple holdings). This has also included a series of doubts among XRP holders.

As per a Reddit discussion in r/Cryptocurrency , one user wrote, "Now, they claim that the XRP they get from these wallets, they sell to fund operations and the rest goes back into escrow,” the user added. “What stops them from not doing that? How do we know that they are actually using the sold tokens to fund operations? They answer is we don't. It relies on Trust and not Code."

However, Ripple Labs has defended itself in 2024, saying, “Ripple has consistently returned the majority of XRP released each month back into new escrow contracts” in their market report.

Ripple's $1.5 billion escrow stands out as XRP turns 13​​ first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 2, 2025

This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 2, 2025, where it first appeared.