Ripple made astronomical gains in 2017. Now its time for the payment network to give back to society. And it has done it in a big way.
In the largest cryptocurrency donation to date, the company is fulfilling several requests from public school teachers for materials. Ripple is contributing $29 million worth of Ripple to be exact that will go toward buying school materials for at least 28,000 public schools. The projects are spread over 50 US states.
“Ripple is funding all 35,000 classroom project requests on our site,” DonorsChoose.org founder and CEO Charles Best said in a YouTube video. “The teachers behind these projects work with more than a million students who are now going to get materials and experiences that they need to learn,” he added while making the announcement.
“The teachers behind these projects work with more than a million students who are now going to get materials and experiences that they need to learn,” Best said.
The donations were a response to thousands of requests by teachers posted on DonorsChoose.org. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has previously been involved in DonorsChoose.org according to its founder and CEO Charles Best.
The tokens will now be converted into fiat over the next weeks but this will be done in a way as to avoid affecting the market price.
Crowd funding platform DonorsChoose.org was founded in 2000 with teachers posting funding requests for classroom projects.
Ripple is expected to make more contributions towards education, according to an official.
About Ripple
Ripple serves as a decentralised digital currency and payment network targeted at financial institutions. The payment network is particularly tipped to replace the old SWIFT system used by banks for transfers. Ripple can cut transaction costs by as much as 60% if both the payment network and Ripple coins are used and by about 30% if the network alone is used.
The system has been tested by hundreds of financial institutions, something that saw its value climb rapidly in 2017.
Ripple aims to keep money flowing freely without the unnecessary charges and fees characteristic of the current transfer solutions. Ultimately, the project wants to eliminate the barriers associated with transferring money by linking various payment systems together.
Ripple ranks third with a market capitalisation of $18,642,730,388 according to CoinMarketCap. Each unit now sells for $0.47.
Like many other cryptocurrencies, Ripple has been on a downward trend for much of this year. At its peak in January, the digital asset was selling above $3 a unit before it came crashing down in February.
Ripple has recently stated it will start funding start ups that develop Ripple use cases. It has previously been focused on institutional use cases.
Best Performing Currency of 2017
At one point its value tripled in just a week when its value rose to $3 from $1 a unit. Ripple rose nearly 4000% in the first half of 2017. It was the best performing currency of 2017 after gaining 36,018% in value.