XRP Community Trolled by Fake Ripple Memo Announcing Heavy Selling

A sarcastic memo attached to Ripple’s most recent escrow transaction recently caused some confusion within the XRP community. 

The message jokingly boasts that 2025 was a “great year” because the company sold over $8 billion worth of XRP to buy other companies. It claims 2026 will see “even more XRP selling” to pivot toward “RLUSD” (Ripple’s stablecoin).

The mechanics of ledger trolling 

As reported by U.Today, Ripple unlocked 1 billion XRP tokens worth $1.84 billion from escrow earlier today. 

The company started the new year by following the monthly schedule that makes it possible to manage supply with a rather high degree of predictability.

The memo mocks a common criticism among XRP investors about Ripple deliberately suppressing the price of the token. 

If this is Ripple’s escrow, how did a random person attach a message to it? The answer lies in how the EscrowFinish transaction works on the XRP Ledger.

An escrow is a smart contract that locks funds until a specific time. Once that time passes, the funds are ready to be released.

The ledger does not require the owner of the funds (Ripple) to release them. It allows any valid account on the network to submit the EscrowFinish transaction.

The troll behind the memo likely watched the clock. They submitted the transaction to finish the escrow from their own wallet the millisecond the escrow became valid for release (00:00:10 UTC). The troll paid the transaction fee of approximately 0.000012 XRP just for the privilege of attaching this sarcastic memo

They got to write the memo, even though the funds moved from Ripple’s escrow to Ripple’s wallet.

The Memo field is a standard feature on the XRP Ledger available to any user for any transaction type (Payment, EscrowFinish, OfferCreate, etc.).

The memo is etched into the blockchain history forever. It cannot be deleted or edited.