$29M worth of XRP going to a good cause. Great, cash out and make good use of it.<p>The cynic in me sees this as a cheap PR move (an SVP of marketing promoting it doesn't help). Associating your token with a good cause gives it credibility in the eyes of the public which in turn leads to an increase in the XRP price in USD. Here's what I understand about ripple:<p>- 100 billion XRP was created at inception with 20 billion going to the creators and 80 billion going to Ripple labs.<p>- It's supposed to be a payment layer between financial institutions and XRP is the underlying token.<p>- Distribution of XRP is arbitrary. Ripple labs can allocate it to whoever they see fit.<p>Donating $29M worth of XRP costs them nothing since Ripple labs holds 80 billion XRP. Only 40 billion XRP is currently in circulation though and XRP's price is currently $0.5. I don't know, I find Ripple quite ridiculous. But the silver lining is donations such as these.
When I think about large-scale donations I think about Melinda and Bill Gates. They don't just donate large sums of money, they donate their time and talent and take their efforts very seriously. They work hard to see every penny well-spent in an effective manner.<p>That being said, I would love to witness a super-rich person throw a one-time insanely large lump sum of money at some problem. Like, "Here's 50 billion dollars. Free mammograms to anyone on the planet until the money runs out." It would be nice to see a global respite from some sort of issue.
This is great for many of the projects but there's a down side to donors choose I wouldn't have realized before taking to some teachers. Anecdote warning: family member works in a public school district where the principal and committees won't even investigate funding requests till the teacher has put something up on donorschoose.
That's killer, thanks Ripple! $29MM!<p>Page isn't loading but this is from the subject of the blog;<p>#BestSchoolDay 2018: Every Project Funded!
MARCH 27, 2018 STEPHEN BURKENEWS<p>#BestSchoolDay is here! Last night, Ripple fully funded every single live DonorsChoose.org classroom project. That’s over 35,000 projects in one enormous $29 million dollar act of generosity. We literally don’t have words to express our gratitude, so we had to invent some. We’re flabbermazed. Astonified. It blew us away, knocked our socks off... WOW! Here’s a message from Ripple and our founder, Charles, talking about why Ripple chose to support our creative community of teachers with this [Read more...]<p>edit: Someone's going hard on downvoting every comment in here. Do you not like teachers receiving money to help their students?
Objectively, here's what this does:<p>1. FUND MILLIONS OF STUDENTS (I don't think anyone can overstate how awesome this is)<p>2. Give Ripple Labs good press and put them on the front<p>3. Increases the supply of XRP which:<p><pre><code> - Means more XRP in the market in the market for more users
- Drops the value per XRP making transaction costs cheaper
</code></pre>
All that aside, let's all give Ripple a virtual high five for funding education. This is amazing!
DonorsChoose.org is a fantastic site and project. As someone who has four teachers in the family, I know firsthand how challenging teaching is on multiple levels, and financial is definitely one of them. I’m happy to support the site as best I can and even happier to hear about this!
This is great, but since this move added no new <i>traders</i> to the market and instead added a bunch of people that will dump their XRP instantly, doesn’t this hurt current holders? I wonder how much this had to do with the 5% price drop today [1]. It seems like what they really did was take traders’ $29 million and donate it, except they had no choice in the matter. Not that this is a bad way to spend one’s money, but I’m sure at least some holders would have liked a choice in the matter.<p>Also, for the teachers, what happens if the price falls before they can dump and their projects have a shortfall?<p>[1] <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/" rel="nofollow">https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ripple/</a>
Beside how great of an effort this is, the main recipients seem to come from the US. Is the US really that poor of a country to need donations for basic school supplies?
Many people in this thread criticize this as a bad PR move and Ripple in general.<p>Still, the utilitarian view on this is only good - it helps a good cause and is better than nothing. donorschoose only gains from this and every pledge that stands behind donorschoose.<p>People are always quick to scrutinize everything, but what do you do to help the underprivileged?
Am I just being cynical but blindly funding every classroom project without oversight and due diligence may actually be a net-negative in the long term. Universally giving money does not solve problems. It takes the right causes and right people behind the causes to really improve things.<p>For perspective, Warren Buffett has donated $46 billion and Bill Gates has donated $18 billion to charities since 2000.
Fascinating. This seems like a great way to get more currency in circulation without pissing off the miners or current owners. If they just gave it away, they would have inflation. But the PR from this will generate enough demand that it shouldn’t hurt the value. In addition every dollar they give will likely circulate rather than be hoarded. And the teachers benefit. Brilliant!
Wonder if they would have gotten more press if they did a rolling donation schedule (1/week, etc).<p>Either way - good to see good projects get funding.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)#Funding" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(company)#Funding</a><p>Are they profitable? How can this kind of thing be justified to shareholders?
I am really happy for these schools, but what if someone is just trying to 'converting a lot of ripple into cash' look like effect from 'charity donation' event?<p>So that prices don't fall overall while this happens and some people cash out of it.