Ripple is hiring additional tech experts in an interesting fashion. The company reportedly is offering top-skill prospects millions of dollars in XRP bonuses to join its team. According to a recent article from CoinDesk, an anonymous engineer revealed a recruitment email sent out near the end of last year. The email included an impressive salary proposal, plus an XRP package valuing up to $3 million, CoinDesk reported via the anonymous intel.
According to Ripple’s career page on its website, the company looks to fill about 12 positions containing the term “engineer” in the title. CoinDesk’s article stated intel from “two prospective recruits,” which revealed engineering bonuses typically include between $1 and $6 million in XRP.
“One former Ripple employee, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of legal retribution, told CoinDesk he never heard of such XRP bonus packages before 2017. However, he also noted generous equity deals are standard in Silicon Valley,” the media outlet added.
According to CoinDesk, another engineering prospect from September 2018 noted correspondence with a recruiter statedly lobbying on behalf of Ripple, allegedly offering $3 to $6 million in XRP bonuses. Although one of the emails reportedly misstated XRP’s market cap as $48 billion, when in fact, at the time of the email, XRP’s market cap was around the $13.3 billion range.
The anonymous engineer reportedly expressed Ripple as “unpopular” in the crypto space “among technologists,” and that Ripple might need to offer such high bonuses to attract such talent due to the crypto bear market, as CoinDesk reported.
Jon Holmquist, a previous Ripple community intermediary, mentioned that increased salaries in the area together with the crypto bear market might provide a reason for industry-wide hiring difficulties. “No one wants to join crypto for the first time during a bear market. I think that’s more of an industry-wide problem,” Holmquist noted, via the CoinDesk report.
Although taking into account other recruiting emails he received, one of the anonymous engineers still seemed to think such offers were out of place.
Further skepticism
Crypto influencer Ryan Selkis posted a skeptical tweet in response to the alleged information on Ripple.
Nothing at all suspect about offering recruits multi-million dollar $XRP packages as if it's equity…
❎Ripple offered multimillion-dollar XRP bonuses to lure top tech talent https://t.co/PZEEaUCs8x via @MessariCrypto
— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) February 12, 2019
It is fairly common practice for companies to offer equity to employees. Investopedia defines equity compensation simply as “non-cash pay that represents ownership in the firm. This type of compensation can take many forms, including options, restricted stock and performance shares.”
The odd thing in the above alleged situation, however, is that Ripple has claimed that XRP essentially is not Ripple. An article from Crypto Briefing took a dive into the discussion, noting a clarification tweet, in which Ripple defined XRP as “[a]n independent digital asset.”
The digital asset #XRP and the company #Ripple are distinctly different. Learn why. https://t.co/yv8cW1gYH6 pic.twitter.com/w3npq2O894
— Ripple (@Ripple) July 9, 2018
The Crypto Briefing article also referenced a post from The Street, in which the chief marketing strategist of Ripple said, “XRP is a digital asset that trades on its own that’s owned by lots of people in lots of places. We happen to own a lot of XRP – we own a lot of cash, chairs and computers – but the company is called Ripple and we sell software.”
