David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, recently revealed that he chose to receive shares of Ripple instead of an XRP allocation.
Schwartz revealed this in a recent discussion about Ripple’s substantial XRP holdings. In particular, that of the company Q3 2023 XRP Markets Reportpublished last November, it showed that it held 46.55 billion XRP as of September 2023, representing 46.5% of the asset’s maximum total supply of 100 billion tokens.
Of the 46.55 billion tokens in its custody, Ripple held a spendable balance of 5.258 billion XRP, with 41.3 billion XRP in escrow. The company typically releases 1 billion XRP from escrow every month but reblocks 800 million shortly after.
Ripple continues to sell XRP
Ripple continued to sell off its spendable XRP balance in an elaborate effort to reduce its XRP holdings.
According to the latest XRP markets report, the company sold 892 million XRP in the third quarter of 2023. Steady XRP sales have raised sustainability concerns price suppression on XRP.
These concerns have led to calls for a different approach, such as the incineration of Ripple’s escrow balance. In the latest thread, an individual with the name X “GPD.Burn the Escrow” asked if Ripple’s business model always involved sales of XRP.
Ripple CTO Schwartz jumped at this question, pointing out that the company has two options with its XRP holdings. According to him, they could continue to hold these tokens, or systematically sell them to reduce their holdings.
Schwartz emphasized that the company does not have a third choice. However, he confirmed that their goal is to reduce their holdings as quickly as possible. This mission could explain the increase in XRP sales rate recently.
When asked whether burning the escrow would not be feasible, Schwartz noted that he could not conceive of any event that would actually make it feasible.
He further stated that it would not bring any benefit. The cryptographic foundation attracted attention to this comment in a previous report.
Ripple CTO Ripple shares preferred over XRP
During the prolonged discussion, another community member asked whether Schwartz had actually chosen to receive Ripple shares instead of XRP.
Ripple’s CTO revealed this to be true. According to him, he would have preferred to get a portion of Ripple shares rather than an allocation of XRP.
YES. The jury is still out on whether it was a good decision. XRP would definitely have been more liquid.
— David “JoelKatz” Schwartz (@JoelKatz) January 8, 2024
However, Schwartz noted that he’s still not sure if that decision was the right one. According to him, if he had received XRP tokens instead of Ripple shares, his holdings would have been more liquid at this time.
In particular, the market valuation of Ripple shares currently amounts to approximately $11.3 billion. The cryptographic foundation recently disclosed that the company intends to repurchase its shares worth $285 million. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse noted that the company does not expect an IPO anytime soon.