Are you saying that increasing the supply of XRP increases the price? That seems to fly in the face of basic economics. Are you saying people are reliably fooled by big numbers on coinmarketcap into thinking the price is rising when it's not and that makes the price rise? That is, I guess, possible, but I certainly don't believe it's significant.

The short term price of XRP really is not that important to Ripple Labs. To some extent, it's seen as a measure of the health of the company and to some extent our success may depend on what people perceive our chances of major success are. But increases in price based on manipulation or misinformation are almost always going to be followed by comparable drops in price. If we like the message price increases signal, it follows that we don't like the message price drops signal. Ripple Labs is not a short term speculator in XRP.

There certainly are short term speculators in XRP who have an incentive to manipulate the price to buy low and sell high. But Ripple Labs is not one of them and their actions hurt us at least as much as they help us. We'd prefer a stable price to a sharp rise followed by a comparable drop.

I don't think there's any way to trick or manipulate the market into an increase in price that won't be followed by a similar decrease. And I don't think such increases or decreases are always due to manipulation because momentum trading alone can do it as well.

You're welcome to disagree with me, of course, but I share my views freely and openly and always try to explain why I hold these views. I don't appreciate unfounded accusations of dishonesty. I'm very open to contrary views and always willing to change my opinions based on evidence or argument. I fully recognize that I could be wrong about this and basically, my position is essentially that market prices in the absence of real changes to asset fundamentals are basically just chaos.