Ripple, who notoriously own a large portion of XRP, have reduced their sales of the token significantly, the lowest sales in any previous quarter
Ripple’s sale of its XRP holdings is an activity that has happened regularly since the company escrowed billions of coins in 2017 to make the XRP supply more tightly controlled and managed.
While Ripple continues to release 1 billion XRP every month, it has lately been reducing the number of coins it sells onto the circulating market. The firm now says the amount of sales made in the last quarter is the lowest it has ever been.
Ripple adopted its problematic XRP sales move in 2017, but lowered the volume of sales in Q3 and Q4 of 2019. The same reduced sales approach remained throughout Q1 2020, the company said in a report it published on Thursday.
According to the report, the company sold XRP worth $1.75 million in the first quarter of the year. The sales dropped remarkably compared to Q4 2019 sales, which stood at $13 million. The report claims:
“Total sales (OTC-only, given programmatic pause) ended the quarter at 0.6 bps of CCTT. This is compared to total sales in the previous quarter (OTC + programmatic) of 8bps of CCTT, representing a 99.3% drop QoQ.”
In that first quarter, Ripple released 3 billion XRP out of escrow, with 2.7 billion XRP making its way back into Ripple’s vaults.
According to the firm, its reduced sales come about as the pause on programmatic sales continues to allow for over-the-counter (OTC) sales. The fintech hopes to continue building “XRP utility and liquidity in strategic regions” across the world.
Meanwhile, XRP’s real-world use is also gaining more traction as demand for Ripple’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service grows. The service uses the XRP token to help banks and financial institutions to facilitate cross-border payments.
The company notes in its report that transactions connected to the ODL service grew to see their dollar value increase by 294% between Q4 2019 and Q1 2020. Ripple attributes part of the growth to its partnership with U.K based payments and remittances firm, Azimo.
XRP in the market
The price of Ripple (XRP) is trending north as the crypto market turns green following early morning gloom that saw most of the top cryptocurrencies trading in the red.
Ripple (XRP) is printing gains of around 2.6% to see its value begin to snoop down to $0.25. An increase in activity, mainly from buyers is helping push for higher gains. The crypto, third on the log of largest cryptocurrencies in market cap, lost 6.92% of its value yesterday as closed at $0.21.
XRP’s performance over the past 24 hours mirrors that of the broader crypto market. Bitcoin (BTC) has weathered early morning pressure to turn green, currently up 1.97%. Ethereum (ETH) has gained 2.18% over the past 24 hours.