Ripple Raises $200 Million From VCs After Selling Billions of XRP

Ripple Raises $200 Million From VCs After Selling Billions of XRP

Ripple, the company behind XRP, has raised $200 million from Tetragon, SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures.

It’s unclear how much equity was given in return, but the company is now valued at $10 billion.

Ripple holds about 50 billion XRP, which is currently valued at around $10 billion. So that $200 million is presumably for 2% equity, or one billion XRP at the price of 20 cent.

“As others in the blockchain space have slowed their growth or even shut down, we have accelerated our momentum and industry leadership throughout 2019,” said Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

What momentum he is referring to is not clear because ripple is one of the biggest loser of the year, down more than any other top crypto.

The only momentum for this crypto in 2019 has been Ripple’s endless selling of XRP, some $2.5 billion worth since December 2017 and now nearing $3 billion if we count the above as a roundabout way of selling XRP.

Where on earth all this money is going to is not clear. Nor is it clear why they keep taking more and more money to the point XRP investors had to petition Trump to ask Ripple to stop selling.

The significant concentration and the clear valuation of Ripple based on their XRP holdings suggests this might well be a security.

The Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) however has not made any such determination despite Ripple’s significant influence over XRP.

Ripple Labs held off selling XRP for years, but at the very end of December 2017 they started selling on exchanges every quarter in addition to OTC selling.

Around that time they were joined by Litecoin’s founder who sold all his LTC. By Vitalik Buterin, who sold some of his eth “basically at the top,” by Charles Hoskinson of Cardano, Justin Sun of Tron and seemingly everyone with huge holdings.

Ripple Labs stands out however for continuous selling. Unsatisfied with hundreds of millions, they sold hundreds of millions dollars worth every three months, sometime bellow market rate, throughout 2018 and 2019.

That makes them a huge contributor to the steepness and the prolongation of the bear market, with this “industry leadership” leaving XRP 50% down this year after falling some 90% last year in what really should be called the great heist.

Copyrights Trustnodes.com

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