Ripple Co-Founder Chris Larsen Offloads 50M XRP—Time to Panic or Buy the Dip?
Ripple's co-founder just made waves—or maybe ripples—with a massive XRP dump. Here's what it means for your portfolio.
Chris Larsen's 50 million XRP sell-off hit the market like a crypto wrecking ball. Was it a strategic exit or just another Tuesday for a billionaire?
The whales are feeding. Retail investors scramble. Meanwhile, XRP's price chart looks like a EKG after three espresso shots.
Pro tip: When founders cash out, ask not 'should I worry?' but 'how fast can I front-run the next dump?'—because in crypto, insider trading is just called 'research.'
Image source: Getty Images.
Sizing up Larsen's sale
Let's establish some parameters to put the size of the sale into context.
XRP's circulating supply sits NEAR 59 billion coins. That means Larsen's sale of 50 million coins represents only about 0.085% of the float available for public trading Even if every one of those tokens hit an exchange order book immediately, the sale is a tiny drop in a very large bucket. Furthermore, XRP itself is up by 44% during the past 30 days (as of Aug. 8).
People sell for many reasons, and most are benign.
Larsen focuses on Ripple's strategy and governance rather than daily management. Diversifying a highly concentrated position is textbook risk management for founders, and it's precisely the MOVE financial planners urge when a single holding dominates net worth.
To throw even more ice cold water on the idea of a hasty exit, Larsen still controls an estimated 2.5 billion XRP, so the transaction hardly looks like a fire sale. The float impact is minimal, and the executive clearly still has plenty of skin in the game.
Taxes can also drive timed disposals, especially after XRP's shocking gain of 440% during the past 12 months. Executives often structure sales of their assets to cover future liabilities or to harvest gains before anticipated rate changes. But this is just speculation, and it doesn't particularly matter why Larsen sold.
The coin's price action so far supports the view that this sale simply doesn't matter in the big scheme of things. While XRP fell by about 14% intraday on July 25 when the wallet activity hit social media, it clawed back half the drop within 48 hours and remains in its uptrend this year. Investors anxious about the token's resiliency have already endured a real‑time stress test, and XRP didn't unravel.
So this looks like a case of skittish investors being worried over what amounts to very little.
There are plenty of bullish drivers in play here
Larsen's sale aside, the conditions for XRP to keep growing look bullish at the moment.
Ripple finally closed out its long‑running courtroom duel with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March and June, when the SEC first ended its own appeal and then agreed with Ripple to withdraw cross litigations. Those rulings dissipated a cloud that had hung over the token for four years, and by removing a perceived cap on institutional adoption, they opened the door for new capital to FLOW in.
At the same time, Ripple has started to diversify its revenue streams further with the launch of its own dollar‑backed stablecoin that went live in December. Giving institutional investors access to more stablecoin liquidity on the XRP ledger (XRPL) means they can transact in larger sizes, incentivizing them to bring more capital to the chain than they WOULD otherwise.
On the technical front, XRP's ecosystem is broadening too. June's launch of the new EVM sidechain now allows forsmart contract developers to use the programming language they're familiar with to develop apps while keeping settlement in XRP.
Taken together, these developments weave a picture of a network gaining momentum in multiple arenas, even as one executive trims a sliver of his holdings. If you're looking to make an investment in crypto and you don't already own this coin, it's worth considering a purchase, as the coming years look to be profitable ones for holders.
