Ripple announced the XRP sales for the first quarter of 2020, reporting a drop of 87 percent from the previous quarter figures.
Total XRP sales stood at $1.75 million compared to $13.08 million in the previous quarter, Thursday’s announcement stated.
The San Francisco-based company highlighted that it suspended programmatic sales to focus solely on its over-the-counter (OTC) sales, building XRP utility and Liquidity in strategic regions, including EMEA and Asia.
“Total sales (OTC-only, given programmatic pause) ended the quarter at 0.6 bps of CCTT [CryptoCompare Top Tier]. This is compared to total sales in the previous quarter (OTC + programmatic) of 8bps of CCTT, representing a 99.3% drop QoQ,” the announcement stated.
Weeding out inflated volumes
While XRP sales were skyrocketing in the first half of 2019, it followed a steep downtrend in the second half.
As Ripple pointed out, the decline in sales was mainly due to the suspension of the programmatic sales of XRP. Though they were majorly contributed to the XRP sales, the company was skeptical due to the concerns of inflated volumes.
In the last quarter of 2019, total XRP sales declined by 80 percent in the last quarter of 2019, Finance Magnates reported.
The Blockchain company also detailed that over the last quarter, three billion XRP were released out of escrow while 2.7 billion XRP was returned and subsequently put into new escrow contracts.
“Every month, the escrow mechanism releases a total of one billion XRP to Ripple,” Ripple stated. “The portion of XRP leftover each month is placed into a new escrow to be released in the following months.”
“Customers continue to see the value of XRP through significant cost-savings by eliminating the need to pre-fund international accounts. From Q4 2019 to Q1 2020, RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service tripled in transaction volume, and the dollar value transacted increased by more than 294%,” Ripple added.
