XRP’s Correct* Circulating Supply
XRP is an open-source, decentralized, and scalable network that is designed around payments but is not limited to. Today, when we look at the current token information there tend to be many discrepancies from multiple sources. There isn’t a single source that has the correct circulating supply for XRP. In this article, I will discuss why the circulating supply is 100 billion and not 48.34 billion tokens like Coinmarketcap and Coingecko have displayed.
Content:
What Is Circulating Supply
Why Data Providers Have It Wrong
Closing Thoughts
Figure A
What Is Circulating Supply
A circulating supply is how many tokens of that cryptocurrency are in existence in the market at a given moment. An example would be Bitcoin has 19,078,700 coins in circulation per above. Although the Max supply is capped at 21,000,000 only 19,078,700 currently exist because the rest need to be mined. Sometimes circulating supply’s may change due to consensus mechanisms that burn or inflate the token’s supply, but for simplicity sake, we won’t elaborate on that.
2. Why Data Providers Have It Wrong
When we look at Coinmarketcap’s and Coingecko’s information for XRP they both display 48.34 billion XRP. The reason why this is incorrect is because of the simple fact that all 100 billion tokens have already been pre-mined. (1) In 2012 the XRPL was created by three bitcoin developers who mined all the coins at once, and later gifted 80 billion XRP tokens to OpenCoin which was re-branded to Ripple Labs. In the bottom gallery, a photo is attached by Ripple confirming, they received 80 billion XRP tokens as a gift. This is problematic because, how can you send tokens if they don’t exist? (You can’t cause they do exist) (2) Many people think that the escrow wallet doesn’t account for circulating tokens when in fact they do. In 2017, Ripple locked their XRP tokens in an escrow wallet for market clarity. Additionally, Ripple’s XRP tokens can be burned at any moment if an 80% vote by the community took place. Leading to another question, how can you burn tokens that don’t exist? (You can’t cause they do exist)
Closing Thoughts
XRP’s total circulating supply is 100 billion despite a small burn that takes place each time it's transacted. However, data providers do not display the correct data for some odd reason and I took it upon myself to submit forms to Coinmarketcap and Coingecko to correct this. I do not doubt over time they will correct this but interestingly enough, I am shocked that it hasn’t been corrected already. XRP is a popularly traded asset and only recently the overview section was updated to a more recent description of the XRPL on Coinmarketcap. Hopefully, soon the circulating supply is updated correctly as well, which will also correct the market cap.