Ripple Sells $250 Million XRP Below Market Rate

Ripple Labs, the company behind XRP, announced they sold 900 million XRP in the second quarter of 2019 for $251.51 million.

“In Q2 2019, Ripple sold $106.87 million XRP in institutional direct sales and $144.64 million in programmatic sales. In total, the company sold $251.51 million XRP in Q2,” they say.

By institutional sales they mean Over the Counter (OTC) which can be anyone buying a substantial amount rather than actual institutions.

While by programmatic sale they mean the XRP were gradually sold on exchanges between March and June.

The amount sold in the second quarter is about $100 million more than that sold in the first quarter of $169.42 million.

Meaning in just the first six months, Ripple has already sold about $400 million, adding to their circa $2 billion sold since December 2017 up to the first quarter of 2019.

What exactly they’re doing with this stupendous amount of money is not clear, with this now becoming the biggest what can be considered as an Initial Exchange offering (IEO).

That’s because the approach is somewhat the same in that 100 billion XRP were minted initially, with some of it given away for free back in 2013-14, while much was kept by Ripple Labs and its founders.

Ripple currently has about 50 billion XRP which they are constantly selling on exchanges to whoever buys them in addition to OTC.

Quite interestingly, they’re selling below market rate at an average price of $0.2794 per XRP for the second quarter.

During the period in question, price never went below about $0.29 and really has never been below $0.27 since September 2018.

Meaning Ripple Labs is selling them at a discount and since this is the average price, in some cases they might be selling them at a steep discount.

Why, is not very clear. Presumably they have plenty of fiat from the circa $2.5 billion they’ve now “raised” since December 2017. So arguably they can afford to demand market price. Yet who exactly is buying all this XRP is not known.

This XRP sell pressure is to continue for years as they have 50 billion more XRP to go in what may well be one of the biggest fundraising in history.

Yet they have not clarified anything about what they plan to do with all this money except for spending it on expensive chandeliers and offices that have such high ceilings, you’d think there is no roof at all.

As well as, of course, the occasional overpaying since Ripple hardly has to consult with institutional or “programmatic” investors about anything it does.

Copyrights Trustnodes.com