A year and a half ago, Ripple held the third position in the capitalization rating with $28 billion. Since then, the value of the network has grown to $ 37 billion, but it has moved to the sixth position of the rating. The slower growth in comparison with the market is due to claims from regulators and the ongoing sale of coins by the developer company.
Ripple Labs has always denied involvement in the issue of coins:
Allegedly, developers in the person of David Schwartz, Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto simply gave her 80 billion XRP out of 100 billion XRP minted simultaneously. According to the Messsari agency, in the course of its activities over the next four years, the company sold coins totaling $ 1.2 billion. This did not please the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which compared this approach to the launch of an ICO and called for the coins to be regarded as a security, not a virtual currency. The point in the dispute between the regulator and Ripple has not yet been put, there are judicial debates between the parties.
At the same time, Ripple continues to use existing coins to finance its activities: over the past four months, the circulating supply has increased from 40 billion to 48 billion XRP, which is why the exchange rate has fallen by 50%. About 800 million XRP (~$613 million) were transferred to escrow in March and may replenish the volume of the circulating supply in the near future.
The impending correction of XRP is also reported by the analytical agency Santiment: every time a major surge in search activity against Ripple is followed by a correction of the coin. According to their forecasts, in the medium term, one XPR will give $ 0.6 – $ 0.55.
In addition to the increasing supply, the price pressure on the cryptocurrency will be exerted by an increase in the key rate of the US Federal Reserve: the regulator will announce its decision on March 16. Jerome Powell has already warned of an impending rise of 0.25%, but a more significant change in the rate will lead to a stronger correction of XRP.