thecryptobasic.com
Wealth advisor Mickle stirs the waters with a bold claim that $XRP’s market cap is being manipulated to make $XRP appear smaller than it actually is.
The prominent $XRP community figure expressed this perspective in a recent video shared on X. Mickle argued that CoinMarketCap’s calculation methods are skewed, claiming they lead to a significant underestimation of $XRP’s true market cap.
According to Mickle, CoinMarketCap calculates $XRP’s valuation by multiplying the token’s price by its own “arbitrary” definition of circulating supply, which it set at 56 billion $XRP. This figure excludes a significant amount of $XRP currently held in escrow by Ripple.
“$XRP gets moved in and out of escrow repeatedly, meaning that the $XRP in escrow isn’t necessarily excluded from the circulating supply—it just can’t be counted as circulating at any specific moment,” Mickle explained.
He asserts that almost every $XRP in existence has been in the circulating supply at some point and that the “exclusion” of over 40 billion tokens by tracking platforms in estimating $XRP’s valuation is not justified.
$XRP Should Rank Just Behind Solana
While this subject has been an enduring debate in the crypto community, Mickle reignited it amid recent news of $XRP briefly overtaking $USDC in market share. This happened over the weekend when $XRP rallied back to $0.62, commanding a $34 billion cap that surpassed that of $USDC.
Rather than celebrating the milestone, the community figure lamented that $XRP’s cap should actually be more than the presented figure.
Indeed, tracking platforms like CoinMarketCap exclude escrowed $XRP from the token’s market cap estimation. Instead, they use “fully diluted market cap” metrics to account for the entire figure.
Mickle sees it as a deliberate act to misrepresent $XRP’s might, pointing out that no other major cryptocurrency faces such a “restriction.”
He claimed CoinMarketCap counts all of Solana’s supply, including those held by the Solana Foundation, regardless of whether they are actively traded. Mickle questioned why $XRP is singled out this way, suggesting it could be a conscious attempt to suppress its market cap and influence public perception.
“If every $XRP were counted, $XRP’s market cap would actually be around $62 billion,” Mickle asserted, “putting it just behind Solana at $75 billion.”
However, it is worth clarifying that CoinMarketCap does not count the entire supply of Solana for its valuation, a trend observed for most tracked tokens. At least 117 million SOL tokens are excluded. If counted, Solana’s cap would be $90 billion as opposed to $71 billion.