The Good News:

The good news is for those of you who hold XRP, and more specifically those who will be holding XRP on December 12th around midnight. Flare has announced they will be airdropping Flare Spark tokens to XRP holders based on the amount of XRP at a ratio of 1:1 or maybe even a little more than that. 15% will be the initial drop, in a handful of months from now (at launch), with the remaining dropping over a period of time, lasting up to three years depending on market conditions and the health of the new token. December 12th, 2020 is only the "snapshot" date. The Flare Spark tokens will begin arriving sometime after the network goes live. You get to keep your XRP, and you get the Flare Spark later on for free. Many people are speculating what the value of these new tokens might be, and Flare is warning that nobody knows the value or the timing of the release. 

What is the Flare Spark Token?

Flare is a partner of Ripple. Spark is the token that will run on the XRP Ledger adding smart contract technology and has been compared to Etherum. The utilization of Spark will not affect the XRP ledger. It will give XRP more versatility in how it can be used. 

For more information on Flare visit their website here. 

My Warning:

So my main reason for posting today is because not all exchanges will be participating in the airdrop, or I should say the "snapshot" because that is all that is really happening on December 12th at midnight. In the list of participating exchanges Binance is one of them. I thought I was good to go, but I ran across a Youtube video that mentioned Binance.us would not be participating. I intended to keep my XRP on my Binance.us account, so I had to find out and I submitted a ticket asking if they were going to support the XRP/Flare Spark airdrop, and about half an hour later I received a response saying they do not support airdrops of any kind. So...

Binance will be supporting the airdrop (the international exchange) and Binance.us (the U.S.A. counterpart) will not be participating.

The list of participating exchanges grows just about every day, but some very popular ones like Coinbase are not expected to participate in the snapshot. 

Click  here for a list of participating exchanges.

In The Meantime:

XRP is currently holding around .60 to .63 cents at the time of my writing this article and seems stable for the moment. I do not see it dipping under .60 cents and if it does it will not stay there very long. I expect the price to rise (to what one can only speculate) the closer we get to the 12th of December. Some exchanges have announced trade freezes that vary depending on the exchange to prevent the price of XRP from crashing on December 13th after a major selloff and profit-taking. It sounds exciting but could end in a rollercoaster ride as this whole scenario plays out.

Enjoy the ride! 

Update 12/3/2020: 

In a turn of events, Binance.us has released a statement just mere moments ago. 

Binance.US to Provide XRP Balance Snapshots in Advance of Flare Distribution

What I find is interesting is that Binance.us seems uninterested in actually listing the Flare Spark when it goes live and instead it says it will issue instructions on how to claim your free Sparks directly from the Flare Network. In my opinion, too little, too late. They are just trying to keep people from jumping off of their exchange for greener pastures.