Ripple Unlocks 700 Million XRP, Sells $169 Million Worth of Crypto Asset in Early 2019

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Ripple just revealed its XRP Markets Report for the first quarter of 2019.

The San Francisco startup says it sold $169.42 million worth of XRP in January, February and March in over-the-counter transactions – a 31% increase from the previous quarter.

Of that $169.42 million, $61.93 million XRP were sold directly to institutions. The remaining $107.49 XRP was sold programmatically to crypto exchanges and other companies that have previously arranged deals with Ripple.

Ripple released 3 billion XRP from escrow throughout the quarter, and returned 2.3 billion into new escrow contracts. A portion of that XRP was sold, as mentioned above. According to the company, the rest is being used for “a variety of ways to help support the XRP ecosystem,” including investments in XRPL Labs, Kava, Forte and Bolt Labs.

During the first quarter, XRP hit 19 new crypto exchanges, bringing the total number to approximately 120 exchanges worldwide, Ripple reports.

As for the number of banks and financial institutions that have joined Ripple’s payment network RippleNet, the company confirms the number is above 200, after the addition of 13 financial institutions at the start of the quarter.

“These companies include Euro Exim Bank, SendFriend, JNFX, FTCS, Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Transpaygo, BFC Bahrain, ConnectPay, GMT, WorldCom Finance, Olympia Trust Company, Pontual/USEND and Rendimento. Of those customers, JNFX, SendFriend, Transpaygo, FTCS and Euro Exim Bank announced that they will leverage XRP to source liquidity on-demand.”

According to data from Messari’s OnChainFX, XRP is the worst performing asset in the top 10 coins by market cap in early 2019. The digital asset started the year at around $0.3535, and is currently valued at $0.3044 at time of writing – a loss of 13.8%.