Ripple CEO on XRP Escrow: Historic Tweet Marks Eight Years

In 2017, Ripple announced its decision to lock up billions of $XRP cryptocurrency inside dozens of smart contracts designed to hold value in escrow.

Reacting to concerns that it might flood the market with $XRP, Ripple transferred 55 billion of its 80 billion $XRP tokens into an escrow account in 2017, from which it could release a maximum of one billion tokens per month.

This was intended to aid the transparency and predictability of $XRP sales. $XRP tokens held in escrow are considered "undistributed," with the rest accounting for the circulating supply. Any unsold tokens are returned to escrow and redistributed at a later date.

In a recent tweet, $XRP enthusiast Bill Morgan highlighted Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's post announcing $XRP escrow from around eight years ago, in 2017.

In the tweet, Garlinghouse explained the purpose of the escrow, noting that it was "good for supply predictability and trusted, healthy $XRP markets."

What's happening now?

Data from $XRP Ledger explorer XRPScan provides insight into $XRP's current distribution. $XRP's maximum supply is 100,000,000,000 $XRP, with the total available being 99,985,835,620 $XRP. The current circulating supply is 64,363,269,902 $XRP, while a total of 14,164,380 $XRP have been burned.

$XRP burns occur natively via transaction fees on $XRP Ledger. Each transaction includes a small amount of $XRP that is permanently destroyed, which helps with spam prevention and network efficiency.

A total of 35,608,401,338 $XRP tokens are escrowed according to XRPScan, while $XRP active accounts are nearing seven million at 6,837,166. The current $XRP Ledger count is 98,108,655.

At press time, $XRP was trading at $3.11, having reached a high of $3.66 on July 18.