Amid increasing speculation that Ripple, the company behind XRP, will buy back the XRP tokens it has released, Ripple's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) David Schwartz put an end to the rumors.
Cryptocurrency influencer Mr. Huber recently highlighted Ripple's net XRP sales, saying, “There you have it: Ripple's net XRP sales reached almost 238 million XRP in December. That's $142 million. That's three times the average monthly sales.”
He also added:
“We can assume that Ripple will make a large buyback soon, otherwise I would be worried. Because there has never been a period longer than 8-10 weeks without a single net buyback.”
In response to these speculations, Schwartz clarified Ripple's position:
“Ripple has two options. We can continue to hold as much XRP as we have, or we can reduce the amount of XRP we have. There really is no third option. Ripple's original plan was to reduce the amount of XRP we hold as quickly as possible.”
When asked if burning XRP in Ripple escrow accounts was an option, Schwartz responded:
“I can't think of any sequence of events that would lead to this happening. And I don't think it would do any real good.”
He also rejected the idea that a reduction in supply could not reduce market value and so the price would have to increase significantly:
“In 2018, many people argued that a reduction in supply could not reduce the market value and therefore the price had to increase significantly. Stellar's burn proved this to be nonsense. “I wouldn't assume the economy works a certain way without really thinking about it first.”
*This is not investment advice.