Ripple pays its bills by dumping 300 MILLION XRP on its own holders
When XRP launched in 2012, 100 BILLION tokens were created at once, all at genesis
The founders kept 20 billion for themselves and gave the other 80 billion to the company
In December 2017, Ripple locked 55 billion XRP into smart contracts so they couldn't just dump the supply whenever they wanted
That escrow releases 1 billion XRP every single month on the 1st, automatically, with zero human intervention required
Ripple typically relocks 70 to 80% back into new escrow contracts and they keep the rest, which is roughly 200 to 300 million XRP, to fund the entire company
At XRP's current price, 300 million tokens is $400 million, every single month
Ripple's CEO Brad Garlinghouse told the Financial Times directly that the company "would not be profitable or cash flow positive without selling XRP." The CEO himself admitted the entire company runs on dumping its own token
Ripple paid MoneyGram over 61 million dollars in "market development fees" to use XRP
MoneyGram then told reporters: "We sell XRP as soon as we receive it because we don't hold any XRP"
Ripple pays partners in XRP, the partners dump it on the market immediately, and Ripple announces it as adoption
The SEC called this out in their own complaint
They wrote that MoneyGram "became yet another conduit for Ripple's unregistered XRP sales into the market, with Ripple receiving the added benefit that it could tout its inorganic XRP use and trading volume"
The co founder who left, Jed McCaleb, kept 9 billion XRP on his way out, spent 8 years dumping from a wallet the community named 'Tacostand,' and walked away with 3.2 billion dollars. Ripple had to sue him just to slow the sales down
The bull case for the last decade has been "banks are coming"
Bank of America, Santander, PNC, American Express, and JPMorgan all partnered with Ripple. None of them actually use XRP
They use Ripple's messaging software without ever touching the token
Ripple still holds around 39 billion XRP in escrow, roughly 39% of total supply
Every holder of XRP is being slowly diluted by the company itself, by design, on a monthly schedule that's written into the blockchain
XRP is now down 6 consecutive months
A big reason is that every month, a new batch of supply hits the market from the same wallet, and everyone knows it's coming
The company that fought the SEC for 5 years and won is funded almost entirely by printing its own token and selling it to the people who believe in it