Aside from the Ripple vs. SEC lawsuit, the community is keeping an eye on questions about whether XRP locked in Ripple’s accounts is in circulation and if not. And does this conflict with the independence of the two companies?
Why is the escrowed XRP not included in the circulating supply? If @Ripple and $XRP are truly 2 entities. Couldn’t anyone escrow their XRP to get it “removed” from circulation?@HammerToe @JoelKatz @bgarlinghouse @haydentiff @nbougalis
— Xrpman (@XRPman33) August 9, 2022
This question was raised by an XRP enthusiast and has attracted quite a few comments. All Ripple executives were called to answer questions, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Chief Technical Officer Nik Bougalis, CTO David Schwartz, and former top developer Matt Hamilton. Tiffany Hayden, the self-proclaimed CEO of XRP, was also invited to the discussion.
Nik Bougalis was the first to respond to the user’s question, saying that while he didn’t have a clear answer to the question about the inclusion of XRP margin in the overall token offering, he did inclined to include it. However, the engineer was adamant about solving the problem and making XRP’s offer clear.
There’s a practical difference though. If I want to pay you a bitcoin, I can use the bitcoins in lightning to do it. if I want to pay you some XRP, I can’t use XRP in escrow to do it. That, at least IMO, could justify calling one part of circulating supply and one not.
— 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝚂𝚌𝚑𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚣 (@JoelKatz) August 9, 2022
Tiffany Hayden, in response to a question, said that XRP from escrow accounts can be sold and anyone can lock their tokens in the same way. The keynote then went on to Matt Hamilton, who said that technically there is no difference between XRPs being blocked and what happens to Bitcoins sent via Lightning. According to the former Ripple developer, if you exclude all Bitcoin blocked in Lightning transactions, the BTC supply will tend to zero.
That’s where Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz stepped into the conversation, saying that there is still a discrepancy in these transactions because while XRP in escrow cannot circulate, BTC on Lightning can still move, even if only in the form of debt. Hayden and Hamilton also agree on this point. The final outcome of the conversation is still fruitless as the topic is rather subjective. According to CoinMarketCap, the total supply of XRP is 100 billion tokens, of which 48,343 billion are in circulation.
Previously, Ripple unlocked 1 billion XRP from its escrow account in early August. This action sparked a debate about the suitability of such actions with the principles of decentralization and made many people worried about the price of XRP.
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