Ripple's $29 Million Publicity Stunt Donation

CNBC reports Ripple gives away $29 million of its cryptocurrency to public schools.

• Ripple donated $29 million of its own digital currency XRP to fund public schools.
• The donation is the largest-ever cryptocurrency gift to a single charity. It 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's XRP coin, the third-largest digital currency by market cap, traded near 58 cents as of 2:40 p.m. ET Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap. The cryptocurrency is down more than 70 percent this year. All of the top 10 digital currencies by market cap have also fallen so far this year.
• DonorsChoose.org agreed to liquidate the cryptocurrency into U.S. dollars over two weeks, according to Long, in the process trying to avoid affecting its market price. The charity's policy, which also applies to donated shares of a company, is to sell right away.

Publicity Stunt Donation

I don't object to the donation one bit. But let's understand the donation for what it really is: advertisement.

There's likely no better way to advertise than to target school children who will tell their parents they got free school supplies from Ripple.

As of March 28, 2018, Ripple is trading at about 58 cents. It blasted from 25 cents or so on December 10, 2017 to $2.78 on January, 6, 2018. That's over an 1,000 percent gain, if one rode to the top and cashed out.

Every rally since then has been a sucker rally. It's down 79% from the peak, less than three months ago. Someone who bought at 25 cents still has a 100% gain, but for how long?

Fundamentally, why is Ripple worth anything at all?