When it comes to Ripple, many people's minds still flash with those glamorous numbers. Founded in 2004 by Ryan Fuger, Ripple Payments rebranded in 2013 and began focusing on B2B cross-border remittances. The official hype was quite loud — claiming that half of their clients were banks and the other half were tech payment providers, with 25% being top-tier players like Tokyo Bank, Mitsubishi, Santander, and Standard Chartered on the partnership list. It all sounded impressive.

But in reality? It’s a completely different story. Those high-profile partners have long since withdrawn one after another. Santander froze its partnership after discovering that XRP simply couldn't meet customer needs; MoneyGram also cut ties due to rising XRP payment costs. The seemingly solid ecosystem had already started to leak.

What’s even more painful is that, according to Ripple itself, they operate in over forty countries with more than two hundred clients, which should make it a cash cow. Yet they’ve never publicly disclosed profit data, and cases of actual XRP application are scarce. This becomes a bit awkward — if they’ve done so much business, where does the money come from?

The answer is quite straightforward: selling coins. Ripple holds XRP in two parts, and from March to April last year, they directly sold 3.4 billion tokens. If the business can’t make money, relying on token sales to sustain revenue is the true picture of Ripple’s business model.