Former Director of Developer Relations at Ripple Matt Hamilton offered valuable viewpoints on the topic during a recent Twitter discussion about Ripple’s effect on the price of XRP. Hamilton emphasised important points that clarified the connection between Ripple’s holdings and the price variations of XRP while engaging in a vigorous discussion.
With over 48 billion coins, Ripple is certainly the biggest XRP holder, according to Hamilton. But he emphasised that most of these holdings are maintained under escrow agreements. These contracts allow for the monthly release of a certain amount of XRP; Ripple only sells a tiny portion and reinvests the remaining amount into new escrow contracts.
Hamilton thus contended that Ripple’s market impact is quite little given the about 4 billion XRP tokens that are sold each day globally.
The developer went on to explain the fundamental factors that actually affect XRP’s pricing. He emphasised that XRP’s price swings are mostly determined by market forces and Bitcoin’s (BTC) performance.
In case of community offense: Burn
Hamilton also made it clear that Ripple has no influence over either XRP or XRPL. To drive home this point, he offered the possibility of burning all of Ripple’s XRP assets if the community thought it necessary.
Ripple’s substantial ownership of the coin raised some concerns, but Hamilton reassured that this should not be viewed as a troubling development for the future. The community has the ability to vote for an amendment that would essentially “burn” the company’s assets if they went against the community’s interests, he noted, as Ripple only operates one validator.
