Ripple Labs Inc. has today announced they sold another $163 million worth of XRP in the third quarter of 2018, bringing the total to $400 million for the year.
“In Q3 2018, Ripple sold $65.27 million worth of XRP programmatically,” they said in an update before adding:
“In addition, XRP II, LLC — a Ripple subsidiary that is a registered and licensed money service business (MSB) — sold $98.06 million worth of XRP in institutional direct sales. In total, the company sold $163.33 million worth of XRP in Q3.”
By programmatically presumably they mean they sold them on exchanges, while the rest was sold Over the Counter (OTC).
The OTC portion for the third quarter is far higher than previously. In the first quarter, only $16 million worth of XRP was sold OTC, while $150 million was sold on exchanges.
The second quarter saw less selling activity. Another $16 million OCT with $57 million on exchanges. Bringing it to a total for the year so far of $130 million OTC and $270 million on exchanges.
What exactly they plan to do with this huge amount of money is not clear, with Ripple Labs stating they have access to 5 billion XRP, currently worth circa $2.25 billion. While another 55 billion XRP at $25 billion is locked in an escrow, more than XRP’s current circulating market cap.
That escrow unlocks one billion XRP a month, or half a billion dollars. They’ve sold only 25% of it for this quarter, keeping the rest in XRP.
We could not easily find a budget for the for profit company. Nor does their announcement make any mention whatever of any spending plans, even in very general terms.
Some of the funds previously may have gone towards paying Bill Clinton to hold a speech at a conference held by Ripple Labs. Some has gone towards charity, while some XRP was just given to banks with Sagar Sarbhai, Government & Regulatory relations at Ripple stating:
“In 2016, we gave 12 banks some XRP to test internally and they loved it!!! They wanted to use XRP but they couldn’t because a lack of regulatory certainty.”
We do not know how much they pay developers, but David Schwartz, the chief cryptographer at Ripple Labs, said earlier this year that some developers at Ripple Labs had received $1 million signing bonus offers by companies trying to poach them.
Much of this money, therefore, might go towards coders, management, prime office space and so on, with Ripple Labs now one of the richest company.
Copyrights Trustnodes.com
