The crypto community has witnessed the movement of 250,000,000 XRP linked to KuCoin amid the charges leveled against the exchange by U.S. authorities.
Prominent crypto tracker Whale Alert spotlighted the transfer in a recent update on X. Per the disclosure, the 250 million XRP was moved from an unknown address late yesterday, bearing a monetary value of $158,381,167 at the time.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 250,000,000 #XRP (158,381,167 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallethttps://t.co/NPhYgRZDRN
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 26, 2024
Community Reacts
This transaction has elicited various reactions among community members, especially considering the unidentified sources involved. Moreover, a transaction of this magnitude was last seen several weeks ago.
Some members speculate that institutions might be purchasing XRP, while others question whether the transaction is connected to HSBC’s launch of tokenized gold.
However, closer scrutiny of the transaction details suggests that the entities involved are not particularly unknown. Data from XRP explorer XRPScan suggests that the 250 million XRP transfer originated from the prominent crypto exchange KuCoin, with the sending wallet boasting an affiliation with the exchange.
Why Did KuCoin Move 250M XRP?
Interestingly, after receiving the 250 million XRP, the recipient wallet has been continuously draining the XRP in hundreds of transactions piecemeal over the last 12 hours. The outflows have gone to other centralized exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, Bitget, Bybit, MEXC, and Crypto.com.
KuCoin Faces US Charges
This pattern suggests that KuCoin initiated the 250 million XRP to fulfill mounting withdrawal requests from users possibly fleeing the platform. Notably, this development emerged as the U.S. government filed criminal charges against KuCoin alongside two of its founders, Chun Gan and Ke Tang.
In particular, the U.S. attorneys allege that KuCoin knowingly concealed the fact that a significant number of Americans traded on its platform.
They claim that KuCoin exploited its sizable U.S. customer base to establish itself as one of the prominent trading platforms without complying with U.S. laws to combat criminal activity and illicit financial schemes.
Essentially, the allegations have sparked panic among KuCoin users, possibly leading to the mass withdrawal of tokens, including XRP, from the platform.