Ripple's Chris Larsen Has Moved $140 Million in XRP to Exchanges During Record Surge

Ripple co-founder and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen moved more than 50 million in XRP over the past week just before the token set a record high.  

Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT posted the entirety of the movements on X, noting that Larsen had made transactions totaling $175 million to four addresses since July 17. Over $140 million of the coins hit exchanges, the investigator said.

The transactions happened just as XRP, the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap, hit $3.65 last week. XRP has since dipped and was recently trading for $3.25 per coin, according to CoinGecko. It is still up nearly 50% over the past month amid a wider market upturn spurred by an increasingly favorable political environment for digital assets. 

Larsen helped create XRP to help banks and other financial institutions move money across borders. Ripple, the fintech company he runs, operates separately from XRP but uses the coin's blockchain in some of its products. 

XRP's latest high occurred seven years after its previous record. Ripple is now working to help shape White House crypto policy and convince institutions like big banks into using its products. 

Ripple and XRP made headlines when the SEC in 2020 hit the fintech with a $1.3 billion lawsuit, alleging that the company sold unregistered securities in the form of XRP to investors to raise funds.

Then, in 2023, a judge ruled that programmatic sales of XRP on cryptocurrency exchanges to retail investors did not qualify as securities—widely interpreted as a win for the industry. 

The lawsuit with the SEC is in the end stages, with Ripple last month saying that it would drop its appeal to try and get its penalty lowered.

XRP's Thursday dip coincided with a public alert from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who warned the previous day that scammers had hijacked YouTube accounts to impersonate Ripple and promote fake XRP giveaways.