Crypto News

“It’s bewildering,” says Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys, a startup that develops applications based on the Ethereum blockchain, the technology used for Ether. “Effectively it’s a totally useless token except that it is being used by that company to make a lot of money to fund some of their activities.” There are 100 billion of the tokens and, according to Ripple’s website, the company holds about 61 billion—with a value of $1.31 each on Jan. 25, or about$80 billion total. Most are held in escrow and can be sold only in limited chunks over time to avoid crashing the market. Ripple has sold more than $185 million in XRP since September 2016, according to reports the private company publishes