Ripple CTO David Schwartz has confirmed a detail about the San Francisco-based company’s escrow holdings that adds a new dimension to how XRP supply can be viewed.
Replying to ongoing debates about market capitalization metrics, Schwartz stated that while XRP locked in escrow cannot be circulated until its scheduled release dates, Ripple could sell the rights to receive those tokens in advance, or even transfer the accounts that escrows eventually settle into.
The clarification is a significant one because XRP’s total supply stands at 100 billion tokens, with about 65 billion in circulation and more than 35 billion locked across thousands of escrow contracts.
It is market cap comparisons with Bitcoin that often spark controversy: Bitcoin includes every coin ever mined, even lost or dormant ones, while XRP calculations exclude the escrow balance. This discrepancy has fueled arguments over whether altcoin's market position is underrepresented compared to other assets.
Is 35 billion XRP available for sale?
Digging into the numbers, XRP Ledger data shows 14,180 separate escrows holding 35,046,399,781 XRP, representing about 30% of the total supply. Until now, those tokens were widely assumed to be inaccessible beyond their time-locked release structure.
Schwartz’s clarification suggests that while liquidity does not change, the legal claim to those future tokens could, in theory, be reassigned or monetized.
For the market, this does not mean Ripple can accelerate the release or circulation of its locked holdings. What it does highlight is that escrow should be understood not only as a technical restriction but also as an asset with transferable rights attached.
With XRP remaining one of the most closely scrutinized cryptocurrencies, especially as speculation over potential XRP ETFs builds, this new angle on escrow may affect how investors interpret supply dynamics and market valuation going forward.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team