Ripple CTO Explains Why Ripple Used GSR’s Trading Bots to Sell XRP

David Schwartz, the CTO of Ripple, recently gave a possible reason behind the company’s decision to leverage trading bots from GSR for its programmatic sales of XRP.

For context, some documents from the Ripple vs. SEC lawsuit concerning Ripple’s programmatic sales of XRP recently took center stage in the XRP community. The documents show an email conversation between market maker GSR and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s team.

The conversation centered on a decision to “let XRP breathe” by halting sales of the asset using trading bots from GSR.

Some XRP community figures pointed out that the XRP recorded a massive surge to its ATH of $3.31 shortly after they stopped the sales, compounding speculation that these sales suppressed the asset’s price.

Amid reactions from XRP proponents, David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer, has been engaging the community, looking to provide necessary clarifications where he can. In his latest disclosure, he attempted to give a reason behind Ripple’s decision to use GSR for the programmatic sales.

Recall that Schwartz previously confirmed that Ripple already stopped these programmatic sales in 2020, with its current XRP sales only relating to ODL (now Ripple Payments) transactions.

Schwartz States Why Ripple Used GSR for XRP Sales

In his latest disclosure, the Ripple CTO emphasized that he does not particularly have any privileged information on the conversation detailed in the GSR emails, indicating that his explanation might not be accurate. 

I have no particular inside knowledge about that GSR email, but I'll tell you what I make of it and the other information surrounding it. I think Ripple employed companies to sell XRP for it rather than selling it themselves to provide a "Chinese wall" to protect against…

— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 20, 2024

However, Schwartz speculated that Ripple’s decision to sell XRP using GSR could have been an avenue to avoid any legal issues. According to Schwartz, Ripple chose not to sell the tokens themselves to hedge against any accusations of price manipulation.

Notably, should Ripple have chosen to carry out the programmatic sales themselves, the firm could have faced allegations of using insider information to manipulate the price of XRP through these sales. 

While Ripple delegated the sales to other agents such as GSR, the firm directed these entities to ensure they carry out the sales in a way that does not significantly impact the price of XRP. Steering clear of large-scale sales in short periods of time is one of the ways to avoid such price impact.

Schwartz noted that Ripple did not need to micromanage the entities delegated with these tasks, as that would translate to the firm’s indirect involvement in the sales. The Ripple CTO said the email conversation showed the manner in which these entities aimed to handle the sales.

In an earlier remark, David Schwartz stressed that the email conversation does not particularly indicate any violations relating to price manipulation, as the SEC would have leveraged that to bring up more charges against Ripple if that were the case.

When the government tries to prove something, they get documents from everyone even remotely connected to the thing they're trying to prove. They take the most damning statement they can find anywhere and show it as if it was typical of every conversation on the topic.

One of…

— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) February 20, 2024

He emphasized that when these government agencies seek to bring a case against a firm, they scrutinize every document for possible charges. However, they only charged Ripple and its executives for allegedly selling unregistered securities without other allegations.