Ripple chief technology officer and one of the architects of XRP Ledger, David Schwartz, shared fresh thoughts on the XRP supply. The blockchain figure's reflections were prompted by a discussion on the topic of cryptocurrency inflation and recent Flare Network's token, FLR, airdrop.
What's up with Ripple and XRP supply?
Discussing the topic, Schwartz expressed regret that Ripple did not distribute more tokens when the XRP price was low. In his view, the influx of large numbers of tokens into the market now that the XRP price is already at $0.4 makes things much more difficult.
But as I've said before, I do wish Ripple had given away more XRP while it was still close to worthless. Everything gets much harder to do as the value goes up.
— David "JoelKatz" Schwartz (@JoelKatz) January 21, 2023
A particular problem is also that for U.S. recipients this would be taxed on ordinary income, forcing them to sell around 50% when they receive the tokens. This is one of the reasons why the release of all tokens into the market should be done while the price is at its lowest, Schwartz summed up.
Earlier, Ripple's former director of developer relations, Mat Hamilton, explained how Ripple ended up with 80% of XRP's $100 billion offering in its accounts. As reported by U.Today, citing Hamilton's words, the architects of XRPL took that volume from the open genesis wallet and gave it to Ripple to build a commercial project based on the ecosystem.
Ripple currently has 43.4 billion XRP in its accounts, according to the XRP Ledger Services portal.