How Many XRP Are There?

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· 10 Oct 2021

how many xrp are there

If you were researching cryptocurrency investment opportunities, you’ve most likely heard of Ripple and XRP tokens. The official name of the cryptocurrency is XRP, but it’s often used interchangeably with Ripple – the name of the company behind the project.

Like many other investors, you might be wondering: “How many XRP are there?” and what distinguishes this cryptocurrency from the others. Understandably, the XRP token is more than just its supply, and therefore we will go into more details about the project.

Ripple Labs

Ripple Labs is a software development company founded in 2012 in San Francisco. It’s behind XRP, XRP Ledger, xRapid, and RippleNet. The cryptocurrency XRP runs on RippleNet, which is a digital payment platform. The XRP Ledger is an open-source distributed ledger database that’s not based on blockchain technology. Ripple also has a software suite called RippleX that other businesses and developers can use to build on XRP.

The Goal of XRP

Ripple’s transaction time for XRP is what makes it stand out among other cryptocurrencies. Verification times between three and five seconds, around 1,500 transactions per second, and low transaction costs make XRP one of the more capable cryptocurrencies for high transaction volumes.

RippleNet connects financial institutions by providing them with a single API, allowing faster, more affordable, and reliable money transfers. XRP is there to help by delivering liquidity quickly, either on its own or as a bridge asset for financial institutions using xRapid, effectively intersecting as a third party.

XRP Token’s Supply and Price

You might be wondering what XRP’s total supply amounts to and what its daily volume is. XRP is not blockchain-based, so it doesn’t use proof-of-work or proof-of-stake to verify transactions. Instead, it uses its own Ripple Protocol consensus algorithm (RPCA). XRP also can’t be mined, as its total supply of 100 billion tokens has already been created. However, the majority of those tokens aren’t in circulation.

Upon release, Ripple owned 60 billion XRP and had it locked in escrow with the option of releasing one billion monthly. The purpose of the XRP escrow is to ensure the predictability of the total supply of tokens. In practice, Ripple keeps the supply of XRP in free circulation at a stable level by only releasing one billion of it at a time and returning the majority of that supply back into escrow.

According to CoinMarketCap, there are 46.6 billion tokens, valued at $52 billion, in circulation at the time of writing this article. This amounts to $1.12 per XRP, with an all-time high price of $3.92.

XRP Validators

XRP isn’t as decentralized as some other cryptocurrencies: It uses a network of validators that confirm transactions. There are more than 150 active XRP validators, of which more than 35 are on the Unique Node Lists or UNLs. Ripple owns six of these UNL validators, and they are considered the most trusted nodes, ensuring that transactions made with XRP from the circulating supply are correctly processed. These nodes are the primary judges of whether there is a discrepancy in the ledger’s history. Ripple oversees the addition of new nodes, which is why most cryptocurrency investors favoring decentralized systems are skeptical of XRP.

Each validator node reaches an agreement with the rest of the network on all pending transactions. After confirming it, transactions are then pushed as an update to the XRP ledger.

XRP in a Nutshell

XRP is a cryptocurrency with use cases more appropriate for financial institutions and enterprises than for average individuals. Since most of it is kept in escrow by Ripple, the volume of XRP in circulation depends on the demand for additional liquidity.

Unlike ETH, which is even used for gambling, on top of everything else, XRP’s use cases are rather limited. Still, XRP’s market capitalization maintains its place among the top cryptocurrencies.

FAQ

How many XRP does Ripple own?

Ripple owns 47.3 billion XRP. These XRP are escrowed in different accounts and effectively locked up until certain conditions are met for them to be withdrawn.

Is XRP’s supply limited?

Yes, it is. There total cap of XRP is 100 billion. Currently, there are around 46.6 billion XRP in free circulation, with additional tokens released from Ripple’s escrow accounts when there’s a requirement for more liquidity.

Will XRP ever be $1,000?

Considering that the all-time high for XRP was $3.92, it’s unrealistic to expect it to reach such a price. If one XRP were worth $1,000, it would be worth $100 trillion in total, which is at this time almost 50 times more than the current market cap of more than 6,000 different cryptocurrencies.

How many XRP will ever be created?

If you’re wondering: “How many XRP are there in total?” the answer is 100 billion, and it has been that much right from the start. However, most tokens are not in circulation, nor can they be mined like Bitcoin or Ether.

Ripple owns about half of all XRP and has it locked in escrow accounts. The company releases up to one billion XRP per month into free circulation, depending on the state of the market.