The debate about "pre-mined" vs. "mined" coins has reemerged, this time sparked by a familiar claim from Bitcoin advocate Robert Breedlove. "XRP is 100% pre-mined. BTC is 0%," he said on social media, highlighting the difference as a red flag. But in the XRP community, the response was pretty straightforward.
Vet, a well-known XRPL validator and cofounder of XRPCafe, has a realistic perspective that cannot be ignored: once all 21 million BTC are mined and distributed, Bitcoin and XRP will be almost the same economically. The way a coin goes into circulation is not as important over time, especially when both assets are finite and traceable.
He is not the only one. Legal analyst Bill Morgan also said that the mined/pre-mined debate has always been more about ideology than practicality.
For him, the key thing is whether there is a limit on the number of coins in circulation and whether their distribution is clear. XRP ticks both boxes with a 100 billion maximum and an established escrow schedule, just like Bitcoin does with its hard cap.
Numbers matter
At this point, the numbers speak louder than any purity test. Bitcoin is currently trading at around $114,000, with 19.9 million coins already in circulation. XRP is close to $3, with over 59 billion tokens in the open market. Both networks handle a massive amount of money every day.
As Vet put it, pre-mine is just "accelerating something that's inevitable anyway" — minus the long-term energy bill of proof of work.
So, while the old stories are still being talked about in crypto circles, it seems that real-world demand is more interested in where coins are going than how they were created.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team