Ripple and XRP 2019 market summary

Last week Ripple released its third quarterly markets report for XRP. In it, the company detailed its XRP sales figures, provided market commentaries, and summed up current events around its product offerings.

In this piece, The Block will provide a market summary of Ripple and XRP to better illustrate the firm’s current standing in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Sales

As of Q3 2019, Ripple has sold approximately $1.2 billion in XRP, as shown in the chart below.

Source: Ripple, The Block

Of these sales, ~62% were programmatic sales to cryptocurrency exchanges. The remaining 38% were sold to institutions. Q2 2019 was the largest quarter for XRP sales in terms of USD, as shown in the chart below.

Source: Ripple, The Block

Ripple also dramatically decreased its sales of XRP in Q3 2019. In fact, the firm sold 73% less XRP in Q3 2019 than it did in Q2 2019 — the largest quarterly sales decrease in its reported history.

Source: Ripple, The Block

Price

In dollar terms, from the beginning of 2019 to date, the price of XRP has dropped by 7%. In BTC terms, however, the price of XRP has dropped approximately 61%. The drop in the price of XRP, in BTC terms, at the beginning of 2019, was likely due to Ripple’s increase in XRP sales in 2019. In fact, the two largest quarterly Ripple XRP sales, in dollar terms, were executed in the first two quarters of 2019.

Source: Coin Metrics, The Block

Exchange

Using data from exchanges identified by Bitwise as having more legitimate trading volumes, we charted out the distribution of XRP volumes across seven exchanges, below.

Source: CryptoCompare, Coin Metrics, The Block

In the chart above, we see that, in 2019, Binance consistently maintained its large share of XRP trading volume across cryptocurrency exchanges. Bittrex, meanwhile, has the smallest share of XRP trading volume. In late February, we also saw Coinbase’s entry into the XRP market. The San Francisco-based exchange currently maintains a 7% share of XRP trading volume.

The chart below shows the total exchange volume of XRP from the beginning of 2019 to date. Trading volumes hit an all-time-high in mid-May, aligning with a spike in XRP’s dollar price.

Source: CryptoCompare, Coin Metrics, The Block