Ripple CTO David Schwartz has responded to circulating claims that the company suppresses XRP price with programmatic sales using trading bots.
The XRP community is no stranger to whispering rumors that Ripple suppresses the price of XRP by conducting large-scale sales. Key factors contributing to these speculations include Ripple’s substantial XRP holdings and the perceived sluggishness in XRP’s growth.
These rumors recently gained increased prominence as emails purportedly documenting a conversation from 2017 regarding Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP came to light. The documents had been in public circulation since last year, supposedly used as exhibits in the SEC vs. Ripple case.
However, the spotlight intensified on them when CowBoy Crypto, a prominent figure in the XRP community, highlighted them in an X post. Media personality Zach Rector also called attention to the documents in a recent YouTube video.
“Let XRP Breathe”
The documents reveal a purported conversation between leading market making firm GSR and a member of Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s team. In the conversation, GSR and Brad Garlinghouse’s team agreed on plans to discontinue what they called the 6t bot.
Per the disclosure, their intention was to halt the 6t bot for the same rationale behind discontinuing the 4t bot. From the email exchange, these bots appeared to be the trading bots leveraged by Ripple for the programmatic sales of XRP.
It bears mentioning that Ripple used GSR, a leader in crypto programmatic sales executions, for its programmatic sales to exchanges. The conversation detailed plans to stop these sales and “let XRP breathe.”
In his YouTube video, Zach Rector called attention to the fact that following this email exchange, which occurred on Dec. 18, 2017, XRP witnessed a price explosion. Data from the charts confirm that the crypto token rallied 417% from a low of $0.64 on Dec. 18, 2017 to its ATH of $3.31 on Jan. 4, 2018.
This incident triggered questions on whether Ripple’s programmatic sales at the time were responsible for the suppression of XRP’s price. However, such a move from Ripple would not be particularly logical, as the firm stands to benefit the most from an XRP price increase.
From The Crypto Basic’s latest report on the company’s XRP holdings, its balance stood at 45.5 billion XRP currently worth $25.5 billion. If XRP skyrockets to $1, Ripple would see a profit of $20 billion, bringing the worth of its total holdings to $45.5 billion.
Despite the prospect of such a price surge, Zach Rector argued that the firm is not particularly looking to witness such price explosions. According to him, Ripple has been selling XRP in a manner that has the least impact on its price, negatively or positively.
The media personality stressed that Ripple’s partners in the form of banks and leading financial institutions would be wary of XRP if the token’s volatility resulted in unprecedented and unexpected price swings and dumps, especially due to Ripple’s market activity.
Ripple CTO Responds to Speculation
However, these revelations have only compounded concerns that Ripple’s programmatic sales were responsible for XRP’s slow growth rate.
An XRP community member recently shared a meme suggesting that Ripple had prevented XRP from skyrocketing by a more substantial rate, keeping it at the $0.50 level. It bears mentioning that XRP has failed to break above the $0.5 zone since it slipped into this territory on Jan. 12.
When asked if the circulating rumors of the price suppression were true, Ripple CTO Schwartz responded. He confirmed that Ripple had already stopped programmatic sales, citing a quarterly report. Notably, the firm discontinued these programmatic sales of XRP in 2019.
We stopped programmatic sales of XRP.https://t.co/JrGX8tIc31 pic.twitter.com/57efr5wKYd
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 16, 2024
Ripple also stopped institutional sales of XRP. The quarterly report emphasized that since 2020 the company has only sold XRP to partners for ODL (now Ripple Payments) purposes.
While the members of the XRP community have shown mixed reactions to the recent disclosures, some appreciate Ripple’s efforts at transparency. However, others contend that XRP’s price is indeed under suppression, if not by Ripple, then by another large player.
