Ripple Reports Sharp Decline in XRP Sales in Quarter 2 of 2018

Ripple in its XRP market report for Q2 showcased a sharp decline in XRP sales and the best quarter in terms of customer base while having lowered volatility and volume. Ripple also mentions the interest of big names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Nasdaq, Fidelity, and Nomura in the crypto market as a good sign for digital assets.

Ripple sold $73.53 million in XRP, a decline of about 54%

Yesterday, Ripple released the market report of XRP for the second quarter of this year. The company reported a decline in XRP sales in comparison to the first quarter.

According to the report Ripple sold $73.53 million in XRP in comparison to $167.70 million in the previous quarter. About $56.66 million XRP has been sold by the company programmatically while $16.87 million XRP were sold in direct sales by Ripple subsidiary XRP II, LLC.

However, the quarter 2 also registered less volatility, pointing out “XRP’s 9.0 percent price decline was in line with bitcoin’s 8.2 percent decline.”

Also, XRP market traded $45.35 billion in this quarter where the “company’s XRP sales proved to be a drop in the bucket of this market.”

Talking about the escrow account of Ripple, 3 billion XRP was released (1 billion each month) while 2.7 billion XRP was put into new escrow contracts. Due to this lockup, “Ripple has access to only 13 percent of the total XRP in circulation.”

Increasing customer base

Despite the decline in XRP sales, the quarter 2 saw “several significant new entrants into the XRP ecosystem”.

• The coil is a relatively new venture by Stefan Thomas that will be using XRP for micropayment applications, for example: facilitating “bite-sized” purchases of media.
• Entertainment talent manager, Scooter Braun the founder of SB projects will be using XRP to improve the monetizing and managing ability of content artists.

In order to build the XRP ecosystem, Xpring, a Ripple initiative is working with companies and projects.

Also, read: SEC Uncertainty on XRP Keeps Investors Jittery as Price Fall Fear Looms

XRP market runback: Lower volatility & volume

At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.455 with a 0.20% gain. The world’s third largest cryptocurrency has a market cap of about $18 billion.

The report states the slowed momentum of XRP market during Q2 which was “consistent across the majority of digital assets”, attributing it to regulatory concerns. Also, the lessening influence of South Korean trading is another reason which used to be 70 percent of global volume and has now dropped down to fourth in global share.

However, the report points out that,

“despite Ripple having its best quarter ever in Q2 — in terms of customers signed — XRP’s price continued to decline with those of other digital assets, underscoring XRP’s independence from Ripple.”

During this quarter XRP registered the lowest volatility since Q4 of 2016 which was accompanied by a decline in volume.

Ripple also stated that though the volume is lowering, the widespread interest in digital assets is only increasing as big names like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Nasdaq, Fidelity, and Nomura shows their potential interest in the crypto market.