A brand new earnings report from Ripple shows the company’s token sales up to the tune of 200% of Q2 volumes.
Ripple released the report October 25, showing total volumes of XRP were just over $163 million in the third quarter – the majority of that was comprised of institutional direct sales, and earnings report authors talked about institutional investors continuing to get on board.
As for the share of XRP volume currently traded, Ripple’s sales volume represents .17% of that total figure – as Ripple releases billions of XRP out of escrow, the monetary flow contributes to what the company calls the “XRP ecosystem” – a total of 100 billion XRP that were created at the outset, and controlled to have an impact on how this cryptocurrency is used. Earnings report writers this week characterized Ripple’s escrow strategy this way:
“In Q4 2017, Ripple locked up 55 billion XRP in a cryptographically-secured escrow account. Ripple created the lockup to create certainty of XRP supply at any given time. Due to that lockup, Ripple has access to only 13 percent of the total XRP in circulation. Ripple’s sales were a tiny fraction of that amount … in Q3 2018, 3 billion XRP was again released out of escrow … 2.6 billion XRP was subsequently put into new escrow contracts. The remaining 400 million XRP not returned to escrow is being used in a variety of ways to help support the XRP ecosystem.”
Part of that ecosystem support is liquidity and transferability on markets: among traders, XRP is prized for its quick settlement and low transaction costs compared to Bitcoin and other options.
In addition to XRP sold directly through Ripple, a major part of the volume also included Ripple subsidiary XRP II, LLC – this after a settlement of litigation between the two firms in September.
The report also shows market capitalization moving around quite a bit, often tracking XRP price.
In another notable part of the report is a list of regulatory actions over the quarter that generally had an impact on cryptocurrency markets – that includes the rejection of a Bitcoin ETF application by the Securities Exchange Commission – with the caveat that the commission is now reviewing numerous ETF applications, and what it decides could be a big factor moving forward.
From this week’s earnings report, investors can get some additional information about the XRP cryptocurrency and how it’s moving in markets. In terms of XRP price, analysts are pointing to a spike late in September, after which values significantly declined to stabilize.
In addition, there’s brand new interest in Ripple based on Apple adding the XRP token to its stock tracker. Like other cryptocurrency offerings such as Tron, XRP will now be broadcast through the Apple platform, which could help international investors to track its movements. If you have an iPhone, keep an eye on these newly listed equities – if not, continue to look at how crypto stocks fare in a volatile market.
