Gigantic sales of XRP in 2018 by Ripple

As per the last quarterly report of the crypto giant, Ripple (XRP), the company sold XRP worth around $535.56 million in the year 2018. The report also states that the value of XRP tokens which were sold in the last quarter of 2018 touched $129.03 million which represents 0.24 percent of overall XRP quantity of the global market. The report further revealed that the sales of XRP in the fourth quarter was the highest among the other quarters of 2018. The average daily sales volume of XRP in the fourth quarter touched $585.7 million.

In 2017, Ripple had sold more than $180 million worth of XRP. However, in 2018 the sales of XRP by Ripple jumped and attained the highest level of $535.56 million. The company had sold XRP worth $170 million straightway to financial institutions, and the remaining was sold to crypto exchanges and various other companies. The declared report also evaluates the interconnection of the Ripple Company with the other two leading cryptocurrencies – Ethereum and Bitcoin.

According to the published report, “in Q4 2018, three billion XRP was again released out of escrow (one billion each month). 2.4 billion XRP was returned and subsequently put into new escrow contracts. The remaining 600 million XRP not returned to escrow is being used in a variety of ways to help support the XRP ecosystem, including the RippleNet Accelerator Program and Xpring investments like Securitize.”

Further, Ripple stated in the report that “In Q4, we saw an overall settling of XRP volatility compared to quarters’ past. XRP’s volatility of daily returns was 5 percent – the lowest quarterly average since Q4 2016. Conversely, we saw the average daily volume for XRP increase substantially. The average XRP daily volume was $595.7M – the highest quarterly average since Q1 2018. In addition, towards the latter part of Q4, XRP’s correlation with top digital assets returned to the elevated levels seen through the end of Q1 2018 through early Q3 2018.”

Before the release of the quarterly report, the firm Messari, which is involved in crypto analytics, released a report in which it claimed that the market value of XRP might be overvalued by $6 billion. The report also stated that XRP’s liquidity could be overestimated by 48 percent, assessing the “actual” market cap to be around $6.9 billion instead of the $13 billion.

Messari also stated that “In addition to the 59 billion XRP held on Ripple’s balance sheet… there could be significant, persistent sell-side pressure in the XRP market depending on the length and structure of selling restrictions placed on Ripple’s market-making partners, a Ripple affiliated foundation, and Ripple’s co-founders, all of which appear to have negotiated rate limits for sales based on exchange trading volume of XRP.”

During the beginning of this week, the Institute for Fintech Research at Beijing’s Tsinghua University had introduced a blockchain research scholarship backed by Ripple. The primary motive of the proposed programme is to bring together the best graduate students in China in the current year to study the blockchain regulations and industry development globally.

In the last 24 hours, XRP was almost trading flat at $0.31.