Since hitting $3.84 two years ago, Ripple’s XRP has been struggling immensely. An asset that once became the second-largest cryptocurrency has been stuck in the crypto abyss. At its current price, XRP is down over 93% from its all-time high.
But, better days appear to be ahead for investors. The firm saw its best quarter yet as evidenced by an 80% drop in XRP sales and a steep increase in ODL services.
XRP Sales Decreased Significantly In Q4
In Q2 2019, Ripple promised that it would undertake a more conservative approach to XRP sales. This is exactly what the company did in Q3 and Q4. According to its recently published Q4 report, Ripple sold XRP worth $13.03 million in Q4. This is a close to 80% drop from Q3’s $66.24 million XRP sales. It is also a huge drop compared to the $251.5 million it sold in Q2 and undeniably the lowest XRP sales for the company in the past three years.
The company noted that it deliberately halted programmatic sales in Q3 and maintained this approach in Q4. With this move, programmatic sales dropped to zero in Q4 as compared to Q3’s $16.12 million. The main reason for this was to focus on direct institutional sales “with a few strategic partners, who are building XRP utility and liquidity in strategic regions including EMEA and Asia.”
Ripple also announced in June 2019 that it would be using CryptoCompare’s data instead of CoinMarketCap’s inflated data. According to the Q4 report, XRP’s daily volume also dropped from $198.10 million in Q3 to $187.34 million in Q4.
Additionally, XRP’s volatility dropped to 3.1% from Q3’s 3.6%. This 3.1% volatility is notably similar to BTC’s 3.0% and ethereum’s 3.1%.
ODL Services Increased By 650%
Ripple’s biggest ambition is to replace legacy global settlement systems with a reliable XRP-based solution. The company uses XRP to fuel the On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) solution which facilitates sending of payments in real-time and at low costs.
The dollar value transferred via the ODL increased by a whopping 650% from Q3 to Q4. Moreover, the number of ODL transactions increased by 390% in Q4 compared to the previous quarter.
The report further notes that Ripple is planning to add more payment corridors across APAC, EMEA, and LATAM this year, on top of the already existing USD-MXN, USD-PHP, and EUR-USD corridors.
Ripple also invested in the largest exchange in Mexico, Bitso, to boost the US-MXN corridor by providing liquidity. With the help of Bitso, Ripple launched its ODL service into Mexico with MoneyGram. As a result, MoneyGram moved over 10% of its transaction volume between the United States and Mexico.
XRP’s Future Remains Bright
The reduction in XRP sales, in particular, is an indication that Ripple is finally heeding to investors who have been incessantly complaining about the company hampering XRP price with the periodic dumps.
Currently, XRP is facing heavy downward pressure from the bears, but overall, the digital asset looks strong. It could be on the cusp of mainstream adoption following Ripple’s dramatic decrease in sales and the growing demand for leveraging digital assets (XRP, to be more specific) in cross-border payments.
