Ripple has given $29 million worth of its tokens, XRP, to thousands of US public schools through donation platform DonorsChoose.org, the company said on Tuesday. The contribution is allegedly the largest ever made to a charity platform and certainly the largest received by DonorsChoose.org.
Ripple’s gesture comes after some 28,000 teachers sent requests to the charity platform. The funds will support each of the 35,000 projects listed by public school teachers from all US states.
DonorsChoose.org founder and CEO Charles Best revealed he asked Ripple founder Chris Larsen whether his company would consider fulfilling the teachers’ requests. Best was encouraged to try because Larsen has been previously involved with the charity. Despite fearing ridicule, he sent an email to Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, as CNBC reported.
“I kind of dared myself to send an email pitching an idea ten times bigger than I’ve ever pitched before. I was almost anxious that they would be offended by the ridiculousness of my ask,” Best stated.
To his shock, his request was accepted without much hesitation. He said:
“In 18 years of doing DonorsChoose.org, we have, honestly, honestly, never been this excited. I would say it’s the dream coming true, except we never had this dream because it would have been too crazy to even say.”
According to Monica Long, Ripple’s senior VP of marketing, DonorsChoose.org accepted to convert the XRP into USD over two weeks to avoid any impact on the token’s price. This was an exception from the charity platform's rules to sell right away when it gets donations in company shares or other assets. The contribution will impact about one million students.
Best suggested that teachers use #BestSchoolDay on Twitter and other social media channels to share the materials bought. For example, music teacher Eric Young will replace broken instruments.
Ripple, the company behind the third largest cryptocurrency, owns about 60 billion of the total 100 billion pre-mined XRP. Crypto watchers often hate the company for being a centralized network.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest