A new Q3 report by Ripple indicates positive results for the cross-border payments project, which acts as validation of the excellent news it has been receiving in the past 2 months.
The report, released on October 25, reveals a lot of interesting details about the project’s activity in the 3rd quarter.
Most notably, Ripple has sold $163 million worth of XRP tokens, or 0.43% of the global volume, of which roughly $98 million was sold as a part of direct institutional sales made by Ripple subsidiary, XRP II, LLC. Q3 also saw 3 billion XRP tokens released out of an escrow account, 2.6 billion of which was placed in a new account. The remaining 400 million will be used to support the XRP ecosystem.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who has previously talked about how 2019 should see multiple partners join RippleNet, highlighted the growing institutional interest in the XRP ecosystem:
One of the things I will tease for a future announcement – we’ll do the Q3 XRP markets report, which we always share, where we’re seeing institutional participation in buying XRP. Q3 will definitely be a record of institutional participation in buying and interest in holding XRP.
The report also commented on regulation and geographic trends.
As ICORating concluded, 55% of ICOs in Q2 2018 failed to hit their target. XRP’s report notes how regulators have been targeting ICOs in particular, which had broken fundraising records in 2018 in just a few months.
On the whole, however, Ripple has been positively received by regulators, with a former SEC member also saying that Ripple was a currency and not a security.
So far, his prediction seems spot on, and with the deluge of good news, like the onboarding of more partners and the launch of xRapid, Ripple is set for an excellent Q4 and 2019.
The point about institutional investment is not a small one, as many see it as a critical step in expanding the market to the wider population. However, it does have its detractors, with Dogecoin founder Jackson Palmer saying that it would simply establish “Wall Street 2.0.”
