This is a pretty freaking wild thing and I would love how to know how it is legal. Ripple is essentially getting outside investors to invest in a SPAC to buy only their token (and at least $1 billion in) XRP under a digital asset treasury structure.
If completed, the move would represent one of the largest single fundraises associated with XRP, one of the world’s largest tokens, which has a market capitalization of approximately $138 billion as of Friday.
When reading further into why they are doing this I have even more questions than answers...
Ripple’s initiative would mark a rare institutional-scale attempt to consolidate XRP exposure. The firm already holds about 4.7 billion XRP directly, worth roughly $11 billion, while another 35.9 billion tokens sit in monthly on-ledger escrows that unlock over time.
The bet is that controlled accumulation and treasury management can bring stability — or at least predictability — to XRP’s supply dynamics as the token plays a growing role in institutional payments and custody.
This just screams that they are trying to pump their cryptos price and I am not sure how it can be seen any other way....
Kinda wonky comment, but I view this as a symptom of mark-to-market accounting.
Where if a company holds Q shares of a company, the valuation on their books is P×Q where P is the last-traded price. So if you pump P, you boost your entire financial position, but it's an illusion because you could never liquidate your entire position at price P.
We are in a wild west environment, where anything goes:
https://fortune.com/2025/01/22/donald-trump-net-worth-memecoin-red-flag-investors-rug-pull/
I will say I actually thought it was a solid move to make a meme coin of yourself before someone else does. Granted it’s still worthless but I mean if someone was going to make a meme coin outta me or something I did I sure would want a slice of the $