• Ripple starts 2019 with a bang
• The receiving wallet carries 4.5% of the entire XRP supply
• Pundits believe XRP is the cryptocurrency of the future

Ripple has started off the year 2019 with a thunderous bang, moving titanic amounts of XRP. The Ripple ledger has witnessed a series of mammoth transactions, the transaction fees for which cost peanuts.

Ambitious start to the year for Ripple

According to a January 1 tweet on Whale Alert, whale watchers tracked several abnormally large transactions that transferred at least 2,133,569,088 XRP worth roughly $755 million have been moved. As per the report, the funds were transferred from an unknown wallet to Ripple OTC Distribution wallet with each of the seven transfers lasting only four seconds and the combined fees for all the transfers sitting at less than one cent.

The transactions have been tracked via the blockchain explorer Bithomp, which shows that the transaction fees was roughly 0.005 XRP, which is equivalent to about $0.0017 at the time of writing.

As per the report, the receiving account carries 4.516 billion XRP, which accounts for at least 4.5 percent of the total XRP supply while the transaction represents at least 1.1 percent of that supply. Currently there are just about 40.79 billion XRP tokens in circulation and the OTC wallet contains over 10 percent of that.

Brighter prospects

2018 was a tough year for cryptocurrency holders as the bear market wreaked havoc on cryptosphere beginning with the anchor virtual coin Bitcoin dropping close to 80 percent with all other altcoins following suit. The damage was so bad to Ethereum (ETH) that its downfall saw Ripple (XRP) replacing it as the second most valuable coin, even though XRP itself had fallen a massive 84 percent from its 2017 peak value.  

While price is only one of the many metrics pundits used to gauge a coin’s overall performance, bulls are optimistic that cryptocurrencies are about to snap back following the crypto winter that has lasted a whole year. Crypto influencer Jed McCaleb, a leading contributor in the development of Ripple (XRP) is among the strongest supporters of this notion who believes that XRP’s liquidation in Q2-3 2018 contributed to the sell-off.   

The bad year for crypto is over and the effects of the volatile wave are still being experienced by leading cryptocurrencies like BTC, XRP and ETH. As users are watching for signs of recovery, Phillip Nunn, CEO of Blackmore Group believes XRP is the cryptocurrency of the future. On December 31, 2018 he tweeted:

“In its purest sense $BTC #Bitcoin is definitely more decentralized than $XRP #ripple. But the fact is one country controls most of the Bitcoin supply and mining and could essentially wrap it all up. This is worrying $XRP is a great bet for mainstream growth.”