Cryptocurrency major Ripple played a genie to students and teachers across the US on Tuesday, as the company funded every single live classroom request on the crowdfunding platform for schools, DonorsChoose.org.
The San Francisco-based Ripple runs a global real-time settlement network for the large financial institutions on which the cryptocurrency currency of the same name, carrying the XRP symbol, works.
Ripple funded 35,000 classroom projects on DonorsChoose.org with a donation of $29 million in XRP, the non profit and the company both announced on their websites.
The cryptocurrency is the third largest by market capitalization, on CoinMarketCap, after Bitcoin and Ethereum. The donation was first made public on Tuesday by television host Stephen Colbert on his "The Late Show".
DonorsChoose.org was founded in 2000 by a Bronx school teacher Charles Best. The website of the non profit said it now supports over 400,000 public school teachers representing 76 percent of public schools across the US.
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The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Ripple funding was kept under wraps for days to prevent a run on the DonorsChoose.org website. The newspaper also said it was the largest single virtual currency gift to a charity.
Best said this was the first time that all project requests on the platform was fulfilled in one go. Requests would include those for books, technology, infrastructure, field trips, and other things to support education. "As a company, we're focused on removing the friction from cross-border payments to promote more inclusion and accessibility within the global economy," Ripple said on its website.
"DonorsChoose.org applies the same principles of inclusion and accessibility to education."
Monica Long, SVP of Marketing at Ripple, said in a video post with Best that the Ripple team was thanking teachers for the education they gave with the donation.
Only teachers from verified schools can take part in the funding program. DonorsChoose.org does not send cash to teachers, but procure the items they request and ship it to them. The group aims to get 1 million people give $100 million to classroom projects from 100 percent of the country's high-poverty public schools over the next five years.
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December 19, 2025 15:10 ET U.S. inflation data and interest rate decisions by major central banks were the highlights of this busy week for economics news flow. Employment data and survey results on the housing markets also gained attention in the U.S. In Europe, the European Central Bank and Bank of England announced their policy decisions and macroeconomic projections.