One billion XRP owned by Ripple has just been released from escrow, making it available for the San Francisco startup to sell to institutions and crypto exchanges.

It’s part of a monthly routine set up by Ripple in late 2017. At that time, Ripple locked 55 billion XRP into separate escrow accounts – each account containing 1 billion XRP.

Every month, 1 billion XRP is unlocked from escrow, and the amount that Ripple doesn’t sell is placed right back into escrow 30 days later.

The process is designed to assure investors that Ripple will never sell all of its holdings on the open market at once.

“To provide additional predictability to the XRP supply, Ripple has locked 55 billion XRP (55% of the total possible supply) into a series of escrows.

These escrows are on the ledger itself and the ledger mechanics, enforced by consensus, control the release of the XRP.”

🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 🔓 1,000,000,000 #XRP (225,092,032 USD) unlocked from escrow at Ripple Escrow wallet

Tx: https://t.co/mnDgiG81ln

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) December 1, 2019

With the price of XRP lagging far behind Bitcoin in 2019, Ripple has faced increasing criticism that its sales of XRP are keeping the price of the third-largest cryptocurrency from rising.

Ripple sells XRP to crypto exchanges on a daily basis, at 10 basis points of the daily XRP volume. It also conducts over-the-counter (OTC) sales to institutions looking to buy the crypto asset in large quantities. The company strongly denies the notion that its sale has any impact on the market.

Ripple says it sold $66.24 million worth of XRP in the third quarter of this year and plans to sell a similar amount in Q4.

Meanwhile, a number of Bitcoin and Ethereum whales are making a splash this weekend.

Whale watchers spotted a movement of 385,904 ETH worth $58.2 million on Saturday. The transaction was sent between two wallets of unknown origin.

Bitcoin whales sent a total of 7,642 BTC worth about $58.4 million in the last 24 hours. Three of the transactions involved crypto moving from unknown wallets onto exchanges, with the other three doing the opposite – moving BTC from crypto exchanges to unknown wallets.

BitLord, one of the most prominent influencers on crypto Twitter, recently addressed the elephant in the room when it comes to Ripple’s XRP. He claims that the third biggest cryptocurrency by market cap is, in fact, security, something that Ripple vehemently tries to deny.

Ripple dump on the community to acquire real life business ✅

Remember,

They say they aren’t responsible for the price of $XRP but continue dumping.

You have no rights to the company OR @MoneyGram

How can we fix this? $XRP is a SECURITY @bgarlinghouse https://t.co/ARDQ3WMCpO

— ฿ITLORD PUMP (@Crypto_Bitlord) November 26, 2019

“How is this legal?”

During an interview with CNN, which took place back in September, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse insisted that they couldn’t control the price of the company’s native token. Moreover, he pointed to the fact that Ripple was the most interested party in the success of XRP as its biggest holder.

However, BitLord is certain that Ripple dumps XRP on its community in order to finance the acquisition of real-life businesses. As reported by U.Today, the crypto behemoth recently completed its $50 mln investment obligation in old-school money transfer company MoneyGram. However, according to the naysayer, XRP holders do not have any rights to Ripple or MoneyGram.

He also questioned the legality of such actions, and crypto analyst Alex Krüger was quick to take a jab at XRP.

AFAIK it is not illegal to sell useless products.

— Alex Krüger (@krugermacro) November 26, 2019

The big question

There is a pending class-action lawsuit against Ripple, which was filed by XRP investors who lost big due to the token’s depreciating prices. The company’s attempt to throw the suit out of the court didn’t fare well.

Back in August, Garlinghouse addresses pervasive FUD, claiming that XRP was “clearly” not security. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) classified XRP as an exchange token, but the US Securities and Exchange (SEC) is yet to voice its take on the matter.

Meanwhile, despite all legal questions, XRP continues to reach new milestones, recently shattering its daily transaction volume record.

XRP has been facing significant bearishness over the past several days and weeks, with the latest sell-off sending it to fresh post-2018 crash lows at $0.22, and its bulls have continued expressing significant weakness as it has failed to post any type of decisive bounce.

Analysts are now noting that XRP may need to continue dropping until it reaches $0.16, as this may be where there is enough interest from buyers to spark the next major price rally.

XRP Likely Needs to See Significantly Further Downside Before Sustainable Rally Commences

At the time of writing, XRP is trading down roughly 3% at its current price of $0.227, which marks a notable drop from its daily highs of just under $0.24.

XRP’s recent bearishness first came about earlier this month when it failed to break above the $0.30 region, which proved to be a significant level of resistance for the cryptocurrency. The downwards momentum that was sparked by its inability to break above this level was further perpetuated by Bitcoin’s downtrend.

In the near-term, it is clear that bears have full control of XRP’s price action, and without some sort of major bullish movement for BTC it is highly probable that the crypto will continue facing further downward pressure.

DonAlt, a prominent cryptocurrency analyst on Twitter, recently explained that $0.19 is a strong support level for the embattled crypto.

$XRP update:

$0.30 was quite important, let's hope $0.19 will be as well.
The price action on XRPUSD is uncannily technical. pic.twitter.com/gJyzZeRYbm

— DonAlt (@CryptoDonAlt) November 22, 2019

In spite of the support that exists at this level, it is important to note that the cryptocurrency may not see any significant buying pressure until it reaches $0.16 – as this may be the level at which buyers are most interested in entering new spot positions.

Harry, a popular crypto analyst who focuses primarily on XRP, spoke about this in a recent tweet.

I think people who are interested in margin trading $XRP wanted to get in at prices in the region of $0.33c but didnt get chance, those who want to buy XRP tokens for long term are looking at the 16-20c range. And Bitcoin has a short $4.8k target x

— Harry (@HaraldoXRP) November 24, 2019

How Bitcoin trends in the near-term will likely have a significant influence on XRP’s price action, but any further downside will likely lead XRP to plummet lower, setting fresh yearly lows.