Sales of Ripple’s XRP token fell a huge 80% to a record low in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to the latest market report[3] published by the crypto firm earlier this week.
The blockchain payments company sold a total of US$13.08 million of XRP tokens between October 1 and December 31 of last year, compared to US$66.24 million in the previous three months. The startling drop off in sales has been attributed to a decline in direct institutional sales as well as the fact that Ripple has paused all programmatic sales[4], which are XRP sales to cryptocurrency exchanges.
The declining sales do not come as a surprise to Ripple after announcing its intention to pause programmatic sales back in June, saying[5], “In the short term, this means Ripple’s sales of XRP in Q2 2019 will be substantively lower (as a percentage of reported volume) than in the previous quarter—with our stated target of 20bps for programmatic sales of XRP volume likely dropping to less than 10bps. Longer-term, by being more demanding about our expected standards for market structure and reporting, we hope to begin raising the bar industry-wide.”
Programmatic sales made up the majority of Ripple’s sales volumes in the second quarter[6], coming in at US$144.6 million, before falling to $16.12 million in Q3 as the firm retreated from selling to exchanges. However, global trading volumes also fell slightly in Q4, from $18.23 billion to $17.24 billion on a quarter-over-quarter basis. With the Q4 figures coming in as the lowest the company has posted in three years, XRP has also seen its value decline by 22% in the quarter.
