Ripple gives away $29 million of its cryptocurrency to public schools
Cryptocurrency startup Ripple donated $29 million of its own digital currency XRP to fund public schools.
The donation, which Ripple says is the largest-ever cryptocurrency gift to a single charity, fulfilled thousands of requests from teachers on the website DonorsChoose.org.
The money will be used to buy classroom materials for more than 28,000 public school teachers across all 50 states, Ripple says.
The logo of blockchain company Ripple is seen at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 19, 2017.
Cryptocurrency startup Ripple donated $29 million of its own digital currency XRP to support U.S. public schools, the company announced Wednesday.
The donation, which Ripple said is the largest-ever cryptocurrency gift to a single charity, fulfilled thousands of requests from public school teachers on the crowdfunding site DonorsChoose.org. The money will be used to buy classroom materials for more than 28,000 public school teachers across all 50 states, the company said in a statement.
Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org, said he approached Ripple based on CEO Brad Garlinghouse's previous involvement with the foundation. He sent Ripple executives an email laying out the possible impact of fulfilling the teachers' requests.
"To my own shock, they said yes," said Best, who founded the charity 18 years ago. "It was mind-blowing that it would be the largest donation of cryptocurrency."
Ripple is officially the name of a San Francisco-based company developing a network for faster global financial payments. XRP is the name of the digital token that financial institutions on the network can use to transact quickly.
Ripple is unlikely to go up by one or two notches in the cryptocurrency world in 2018, and this is the case for three reasons. The first reason is the sheer dollar volume that separates each of the three currencies in the top positions, in terms of their market cap. Bitcoin is at over $191 billion, Ethereum is at over $84 billion, and Ripple is at over $35 billion. To displace Ethereum would require a deficit of about $49 billion to be closed (which is more than double Iceland's entire national GDP). The second reason is that the use cases for Ripple are mostly for the trade of assets, not for day-to-day spending. As consumer awareness of cryptocurrencies will rise significantly in 2018 and beyond, the interest of the masses will be on cryptocurrencies that can be used as currencies, not just for investment transactions. Finally, the third reason is that because Ripple cannot be bought with fiat currencies, one must purchase existing cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum to purchase XRP. This goes on to feed demand for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and will only solidify their positions as the top two cryptocurrencies on the market
