Blockchain-based payments network Ripple recently donated $29 mln of its own cryptocurrency XRP to support US public schools, fulfilling over 35,000 funding requests from teachers via DonorsChoose charity fund, as reported by ABC7 March 28.
According to CNBC, DonorsChoose will convert the donations into US dollars over the course of two weeks in order to avoid the volatility of the cryptocurrency market, and to comply with the company’s policy to sell the donated currency immediately.
The donated money will be used to equip more than 30,000 classrooms across all 50 states; “approximately one million students are receiving books, school supplies, technology, field trips, and other resources vital for learning through DonorsChoose.org,” Ripple said in a public statement March 27.
According to founder and CEO of DonorsChoose Charles Best, who sent a donation request to Ripple, the move would be “the largest donation of cryptocurrency.”
San Francisco-based Ripple’s XRP altcoin token, currently trading at $0.53, is the third largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, which amounts to over $20 bln at press time, according to the data from Coinmarketcap.
Ripple is not the first company to donate cryptocurrency to charity. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Ethereum (ETH) cofounder Vitalik Buterin partnered with decentralized payment network OmiseGO to donate $1 mln in ERC20 tokens to the African charity GiveDirectly.
Earlier in February, Buterin also donated $2.4 mln worth of Ethereum to the SENS Research Foundation, a charity funding research for treating age-related diseases.
In December, Bitcoin-exclusive Pineapple Fund donated $1 mln in Bitcoin (BTC) to the Internet Archive. Pineapple Fund aims to give away $86 mln worth of Bitcoin in total to various nonprofit organizations.