Ripple collected $163M from XRP sales in the third quarter

More than doubling its sales of XRP from the previous quarter, Ripple picked up an additional $163.3M in Q3 2018. While so called "programmatic sales" were only up from $56.7M to $65.3M, the company saw a massive boost in sales directly to institutions -- a whopping $98.1M vs. just $16.9 in the prior quarter. Ripple's "Q3 2018 XRP Markets Report" does not explain the big increase. The company notes that volatility of XRP's price was low during the quarter, except for a spike in the final two weeks. It added that 400 million XRP tokens were removed from its 55 billion token escrow on a net basis. Ripple says 38 billion XRP were traded during the quarter and the company's sales totaled just 0.43% of that. Still, Ripple has effectively increased its coffers by $406.5M this year even as XRP trades far below all-time highs. On January 4, XRP hit a record $3.84. Today, it's currently trading at $0.4548. (Source: Ripple)