California-based Ripple, the fintech company developing blockchain-based transaction settlement and payment solutions, has reported a decline in its own sales of its native XRP token in the second quarter of 2018.
Ripple and its subsidiary XRP II sold $73.53 million worth of XRP during the three months to end-June, down 56.1% from the previous quarter, the company’s Q2 report shows.
The combined direct and programmatic sales of XRP by Ripple and its subsidiary in Q2 represented just 0.162% of the total volume of XRP traded during the period. Ripple described the XRP sales by the company as “a drop in the bucket of the XRP market”.
The overall trading volume of XRP in Q2 amounted to $45.3 billion, representing a significant decrease of 71.7% from the preceding quarter.
“The total market capitalization of all digital assets started the year at $603.7 billion but by mid-year — despite the issuance of hundreds of new ICO “coins” — had declined to $254.7 billion,” Ripple noted. “During Q2, the XRP market also slowed considerably, compared to the prices and volumes we saw in Q4 2017 and Q1 2018.”
Ripple attributes the declines to the ongoing concerns around regulation, both in the US and around the globe.
“Despite the SEC announcing in June that they don’t consider ether a security, there wasn’t a meaningful and sustained bump in volume or price of any digital asset, including XRP,” Ripple said.
Another reason for the decline, according to Ripple, was the weakening influence of crypto trading in South Korea.
“South Korea had dominated digital asset trading, on some days accounting for nearly 70 percent of global volume,” Ripple observed. “But by the end of the second quarter, South Korea’s trading had fallen to fourth in global share.”
At the same time, Ripple notes, XRP was “notably less volatile” and its 9% price decline for the quarter was in line with Bitcoin’s 8.2% fall.
Ripple develops several products based on its distributed open source internet protocol: a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS), currency exchange and remittance network, plus the XRP digital asset.
Ripple has numerous partnerships, mainly on cross-border payment transaction settlement, with various global banks such as Santander (MC:SAN), SBI, UniCredit, Royal Bank of Canada, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, to name a few.
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