Blockchain Payments company Ripple on Wednesday revealed that it has sold $251.51 million in XRP in the second quarter of 2019.
According to the Q2 report, the company sold $169.42 million in XRP the previous quarter, which marks a 48 percent jump in sales in the recent quarter.
The company has seen a massive surge in institutional interest as it sold $106.87 million through institutional direct sales - a nearly 73 percent increase from $61.9 million the previous quarter. The company also sold $144.64 million worth XRP tokens in programmatic sales.
Understand this, if #Ripple are reducing their OTC sales of #XRP, this means they are ready to launch. This means we are one or two @bgarlinghouse announcements away before massive FOMO will hit the exchanges and send XRP to double digits. May happen end of Q3 or early Q4
— ColonelXRP (@ColonelXrp) July 24, 2019
However, due to inflated sales volumes, Ripple temporarily paused programmatic sales and placed limits on institutional sales to evaluate the problem in early Q2.
“Ripple later resumed XRP sales at a rate that was 50% lower versus previous guidance, at 10 basis points of CoinMarketCap reported volumes,” the company stated.
In the quarterly report, the company also explained that it withdrew one billion from escrow each month over the quarter for a total of three billion XRP. Out of the 3 billion XRPs, 2.1 billion tokens were reinvested into escrow contracts, while the rest were used to fund XRP developments via its incubator, Xpring, and RippleNet partnerships.
Cautious with the market demand
The company also lowered its sales expectations for the third quarter. “Ripple plans to take a more conservative approach to XRP sales in Q3.”
Ripple is also planning to exit a few over-the-counter (OTC) markets and shift its focus on the markets which need liquidity. However, this move might impact the institutional sales of the San Francisco-baed company.
Earlier this month, Ripple announced that its incubation and investment arm Xpring invested $500 million in various XRP-related projects since its launch in May 2018.