Does Ripple Really Own 48 Billion XRP?

Ripple Labs is one of the oldest companies in the industry and it’s behind one of the most popular altcoins – XRP.

But the question of them dumping their own altcoin on the market to fund operations has caused serious controversy for many years and now, the discussion has been brought up again, this time highlighting the tremendous number of tokens that the company is in control of.

“All the XRP listed is owned by Ripple, thus the total should be the sum of the two numbers. Total XRP owned by Ripple: 48,306,585,931.” Pointed out one X user.

This suggests that the company is in control of more or less $100 billion worth of tokens that it’s using to fund operations and sells a portion of them every month.

Chipping on the matter was the Ripple CTO, David Schwartz, who said:

“This would be correct if you don’t think the XRPL escrow feature is actually escrow. Funds in an escrow are not held by the party who put them into escrow.”

A senior software engineer, Mayuka Vadari, also chipped in on the matter, saying:

“Technically (and legally), the escrow funds are temporarily being held by the network, not Ripple. Yes, those funds will ultimately go back to Ripple, but for the time being, there’s nothing Ripple can do to access those funds (or do anything with them) before the unlock time.”

If it sounds like a technicality to you, that’s probably because it is. As the saying goes “if it walks like a duck…” you know the rest. Ripple Labs is indeed going to receive these tokens as per the Escrow conditions, as it has been over the past many years now.