Ripple’s Stopped All XRP Sales on Crypto Exchanges
Ripple significantly reduced the amount of XRP the company sold in the fourth quarter of 2019. In the fourth quarter of 2019, the number of XRP sold dropped by 80%. Ripple sold a total of $13.08 million in XRP in Q4, compared with $66.24 million in Q3, according to the company’s latest market report.
A major contributing factor to such a sharp decline in sales of XRP is Ripple’s decision to pause all distribution of the digital asset on cryptocurrency exchanges. The company usually sold XRP on exchanges “programmatically” in response to demand identified by the overall XRP daily trading volume. In the past, programmatic sales accounted for the majority of Ripple’s sales volumes. According to the report in Q2, the company sold $144.6 million worth of XRP directly on exchanges, however, midway through Q3, such sales were put to a halt mainly due to reports of inflated trading volumes.
“Ripple continues to evaluate its benchmarks given challenges, such as fake volume, that continue to persist in the industry,”
According to a statement on the company’s website:
“Ripple continued the pause of programmatic sales, focusing solely on our over-the-counter (OTC) sales with a few strategic partners, who are building XRP utility and liquidity in strategic regions including EMEA [Europe, the Middle East and Africa] and Asia,” The Q4 sales figures are the lowest since 2017. Overall trading volumes of XRP also declined slightly in Q4, at $17.24 billion as compared with $18.23 billion in the previous quarter.
According to Ripple:
“The average daily volume was reported at $187.34 million in Q4 versus $198.10 million in Q3, and below Q2’s reported $429.51 average daily volume,”
It’s a strong possibility that XRP’s 2020 rally could just be getting started, as investor confidence is likely to grow significantly if Ripple continues to lessen their quarterly sales. as the cryptocurrency has been able to climb from its recent lows of under $0.18 to highs of $0.25, before declining slightly to its current price of $0.226.
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OhNoRipple via https://www.ohnocrypto.com/ @Arthur Webb, @Khareem Sudlow