New Whale Moves $200M In XRP Amid Ripple Labs' IPO Speculations

A whale moved XRP tokens worth more than $200 million from a crypto exchange to a new wallet on Tuesday amid speculations that Ripple Labs was going public.

The whale – an individual or organization that holds a significant amount of a particular digital asset – moved 409,776,402 XRP tokens, approximately worth $210 million, from the crypto exchange Bitvavo to a new unknown wallet, blockchain tracker and analytics system WhaleAlert said in a tweet.

The industry recently witnessed whales and other entities scooping up XRP, the native cryptocurrency of the blockchain firm Ripple Labs, following a drop in its value.

The crypto assets' trading volume has doubled to more than $1 billion this week, underlining investors' favorable sentiment toward XRP.

But it is not just retail investors who showed renewed interest in XRP. Institutional investors also accumulated the crypto asset for the 25th consecutive week following Ripple Labs' landmark victory in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Another possible reason for the surge in interest in XRP is the speculation that Ripple Labs is planning an initial public offering (IPO) or offering its stocks to the public through a new stock issuance for the first time.

The rumor that Ripple would go public started last month before the company held a "Proper Party" to celebrate its legal victory over the SEC. While the team did not drop any major announcements at the event, a new job listing rekindled the rumor.

The company shared the job posting for a shareholder communications senior manager across multiple locations inside and outside of the U.S. on Monday. While the ad did not explicitly say anything about Ripple Labs going public, many speculated it was a clue about the company's well-guarded plan.

How so?

The job description said the company was looking for people who can develop "strategic plans and key messages for this audience including relevant company moments such as M&A, investments, liquidity events and other high-impact moments." Selected candidates will have to work "with the senior leadership, Product and Marketing teams to create and update investor materials, including presentations, fact sheets, case studies and analyses."

Ripple Labs has not yet commented on the latest speculation.

XRP was trading down at $0.4922 as of 8:06 a.m. ET on Wednesday, with a 24-hour trading volume up by 55.79% at $1,045,754,512 – representing a 0.38% decrease in the last 24 hours and a 0.8% loss over the past seven days.

XRP's total circulating supply stands at 53,441,027,384 tokens, with its value down by 0.39% at a $26,303,721,462 market cap, according to data from CoinMarketCap