(Dinarian Note: It absolutely blows my mind how THEY don't explain that whatever is not sold goes back into the ESCROW account.)

Ripple is on a selling spree, offloading a total of 350 million XRP from its treasury reserves in September. XRP price has already recovered after immediate negative reactions to Ripple’s two selling activities this month, worth approximately $200 million.

In its most recent sale, the ‘Ripple (1)‘ address spent 200 million XRP, worth nearly $120 million, on September 23. Before that, the treasury account had moved 150 million XRP to the same destination address, ‘rP4X2hTa7A7udDbE6wczXvPz7XZ63sKxv3‘, on September 13.

This comes from a pattern the largest XRP holder and core developer repeats every month, inflating the token’s circulating supply. In September, the company unlocked 1 billion XRP, reserving 200 million in ‘Ripple (1)’, but adding 150 million more tokens.

Finbold monitors Ripple’s monthly onchain activity through the XRP Scan explorer, reporting its selling sprees and their economic impacts. Essentially, we consider a sale once XRP moves from one of Ripple’s treasury accounts to an unknown address without disclosure.

XRP price analysis amid Ripple’s selling spree in September

As of this writing, XRP is trading at $0.589, down 1.7% in the last 24 hours. Slightly recovering from a crash to $0.583 following the 200 million XRP sale on September 23.

Notably, the previous sale of 150 million XRP was marked by a price increase from $0.57 to $0.596. This happened as XRP whales massively increased their positions, buying over 380 million XRP from September 10 to 20.

On the other hand, the token experienced significant crashes right after Ripple prepared its September selling spree on two occasions. First, dropping from $0.565 to $0.545 while unlocking and reserving the 200 million XRP. Later, it went from $0.544 to as low as $0.509 after moving the extra 150 million, signaling the intention of a larger sell-off in September.

Despite the challenges of Ripple’s ongoing selling spree, analysts remain bullish on XRP performance for the following weeks. Finbold reported some of these analyses, forecasting XRP to $1 soon, backed by an artificial intelligence (AI) prediction.

Nevertheless, investors and traders must understand how supply and demand dynamics can impact the price action. Ripple still has over 40 billion XRP that will eventually start circulating through the company’s sales. The demand must overcome this supply pressure for the token to perform positively in the long run.

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The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has started phase 2 of the e-HKD pilot program. The project’s scope has expanded from a focus on retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) to encompass tokenized deposits, so there’s a re-name to e-HKD+.

Eleven groups of firms are exploring use cases, including the settlement of tokenized assets, programmability and offline payments. As part of the project, the firms will explore the commercial viability of potentially making available these new forms of digital money to individuals and corporates. Both technical and legal aspects will be explored.

While the HKMA didn’t mention Project Ensemble in the announcement, it is also exploring tokenized deposits where a wholesale CBDC is used for interbank settlement and institutional settlement of tokenized assets. By contrast, the e-HKD focus is on settlement for corporates and individuals.

The HKMA plans to create an e-HKD Industry Forum and participants will test their use cases as part of the e-HKD sandbox. That means the HKMA has the e-HKD sandbox for CBDC and tokenized deposits, as well as the separate stablecoin sandbox. Additionally, there’s the Project Ensemble sandbox for institutional use cases of wholesale CBDC.

“Project e-HKD+ signifies the HKMA’s commitment to digital money innovation,” said Mr Eddie Yue, CEO of the HKMA. “The HKMA will continue to adopt a use-case driven approach in its exploration of digital money.”

CBDC, tokenized deposit use cases

On that point, the use cases will include (abbreviated):

Settlement of tokenized assets

• Hang Seng Bank, Aptos Lab, Boston Consulting Group (BCG): settlement of tokenized funds on public blockchain
• HSBC: explore permissioned protocols for public blockchain payments while addressing privacy
• Standard Chartered, BlackRock, Mastercard, Libeara: tokenized fund transactions settled with tokenized money
• Visa, ANZ, Fidelity and ChinaAMC: Australian corporate investors pay (using DvP) with tokenized deposits and e-HKD for Hong Kong tokenized fund units.

Programmability

• Bank of China (Hong Kong), Sanfield (Management) construction consortium: funding and prepayments
• China Construction Bank (Asia): assess different blockchain designs for programmable payments
• DBS: purpose bound money and ESG rewards
• Hang Seng Bank: an open digital rewards platform
• Mastercard, Kasikornbank (KBank) and Airstar Bank: digital money for domestic and international trade finance

Offline payments

• Bank of Communications (Hong Kong) and China Mobile (Hong Kong): offline payments using mobile SIM card
• ICBC (Asia): anonymous e-HKD wallet and dual offline payments.

A full version of the use cases is available on the HKMA website.

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The DLT exchange 21X has partnered with fund administrator Apex Group to list the tokenized securities of Apex’s clients. The exchange is awaiting its DLT Pilot Regime go ahead from the European Securities Market Authority (ESMA). Once approved, 21X will be both a DLT trading and settlement system (DLT TSS). This news means the approval process is quite advanced.

It also acts as a rallying cry for asset managers, institutions, brokers and distributors who might want to list securities on 21X’s market.

Apex administers more than $3 trillion in funds for its clients and is prolific in its blockchain activities, starting with the acquisition of FundAdminChain in early 2022. Additionally, it has invested in various solutions, including tokenization platform Tokeny and Inveniam, which provides on-chain valuation data for tokenized assets. Tokeny is also one of 21X’s partners.

21X said it will be the “European exchange of choice” for listing Apex client tokenized securities.

“In the dynamic landscape of fund management, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for success and asset tokenisation holds tremendous potential for transforming the fund administration and management landscape,” said Peter Hughes, founder and CEO of Apex Group. “Our partnership with 21X fits perfectly with our strategy of expanding our tokenized asset capabilities.”

The DLT Pilot Regime

It’s been a long wait for the first DLT Pilot Regime approval. Yesterday marked 18 months since the legislation came into force, with no institutions approved so far. Amongst the first batch of four applicants, 21X is the only that applied to be both an exchange and settlement system. Conventional regulations require a separation between exchanges and central securities depositories (CSDs), which the DLT Pilot Regime relaxes, although the approval process involves stringent requirements relating to both activities. Additionally, the DLT Pilot Regime allows exchanges to deal directly with retail clients, rather than restricting interactions to brokers and other institutions.

“This announcement is a major milestone on our path to launching the first fully regulated DLT-based exchange and settlement system,” said Max J. Heinzle, founder and CEO of 21X. “As a major digital asset service provider, Apex Group’s dedication to list tokenized securities on 21X is also a historic step for capital markets globally.”

Earlier this year Mr Heinzle shared details about 21X’s plans in a Ledger Insights interview.

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