On Apr. 1, exactly 1 billion $XRP (valued at roughly $1.34 billion) was released from Ripple’s cryptographic escrow accounts.
The most recent unlock has been performed in two separate 500 million $XRP tranches, Whale Alert data shows.
The $XRP supply is deliberately predictable. From the get-go, the company held a massive portion of the total $XRP supply. This created anxiety among investors that Ripple could suddenly flood the market and crash the price.
Ripple found a solution by locking in 55 billion $XRP into a series of cryptographic, smart-contract-based escrows on the $XRP Ledger.
The system is programmed to release exactly 1 billion $XRP on the first day of every month for 55 months (but there can be some deviations from the schedule). This guarantees supply predictability.
There is a common misconception about Ripple immediately dumping all of its 1 billion unlocked tokens onto the open retail market.
Ripple keeps a fraction of the unlocked $XRP to fund its ongoing business operations and to sell directly to its institutional clients. These clients use $XRP for On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) to perform payments.
Ripple rarely needs a full billion $XRP in a single month. The company tends to use only a fraction of this sum.
Burning the escrow?
There is recurring speculation within the community about Ripple potentially burning its escrow.
David Schwartz, the most outspoken Ripple vet, recently debunked the idea that burning the escrow would trigger a massive price rally. He pointed to Stellar ($XLM), which permanently burned 50% of its total token supply in November 2019 only for the $XLM token failing to experience a sustained price increase.
