Ripple CTO David Schwartz has confirmed a element concerning the San Francisco-based firm’s escrow holdings that provides a brand new dimension to how XRP provide may be seen.
Replying to ongoing debates about market capitalization metrics, Schwartz said that whereas XRP locked in escrow can’t be circulated till its scheduled launch dates, Ripple might promote the rights to obtain these tokens prematurely, and even switch the accounts that escrows finally settle into.
The clarification is a big one as a result of XRP’s whole provide stands at 100 billion tokens, with about 65 billion in circulation and greater than 35 billion locked throughout hundreds of escrow contracts.
Ripple might promote the proper to obtain the tokens launched from escrow and even promote the accounts the escrows full into. However the XRP nonetheless cannot flow into till their launch dates.
— David ‘JoelKatz’ Schwartz (@JoelKatz) October 27, 2025
It’s market cap comparisons with Bitcoin that usually spark controversy: Bitcoin consists of each coin ever mined, even misplaced or dormant ones, whereas XRP calculations exclude the escrow steadiness. This discrepancy has fueled arguments over whether or not altcoin’s market place is underrepresented in comparison with different belongings.
Is 35 billion XRP obtainable on the market?
Digging into the numbers, XRP Ledger information reveals 14,180 separate escrows holding 35,046,399,781 XRP, representing about 30% of the entire provide. Till now, these tokens had been broadly assumed to be inaccessible past their time-locked launch construction.
Schwartz’s clarification means that whereas liquidity doesn’t change, the authorized declare to these future tokens might, in concept, be reassigned or monetized.
For the market, this doesn’t imply Ripple can speed up the discharge or circulation of its locked holdings. What it does spotlight is that escrow needs to be understood not solely as a technical restriction but additionally as an asset with transferable rights hooked up.
With XRP remaining some of the carefully scrutinized cryptocurrencies, particularly as hypothesis over potential XRP ETFs builds, this special approach on escrow might have an effect on how buyers interpret provide dynamics and market valuation going ahead.
