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In a recent discussion about the circulating supply of XRP, Ripple CTO David Schwartz draws parallels with Bitcoin and the coins attributed to its mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. His remarks highlighted the complexity of defining what constitutes “circulating supply” in the crypto landscape.
An X user had drawn attention to the disparity in XRP’s circulating supply reported by the crypto ranking platform CoinMarketCap and popular XRP explorer XRPScan.
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CoinMarketCap reports XRP’s current circulating supply as 57.64 billion XRP, while according to a screenshot shared by the X user, XRPScan reported 62.23 billion XRP.
Addressing this speculation, Schwartz explained, “How you measure circulating supply depends on what you consider to be circulating and what you don’t consider to be circulating.” He continued, “For a Bitcoin analogy, are Satoshi’s bitcoins circulating? Reasonable people can even disagree on which bitcoins are Satoshi’s.”
Satoshi owned Bitcoin in spotlight
The analogy made by the Ripple CTO is particularly relevant given that Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to own over 1 million BTC, which have remained untouched since Bitcoin’s early days. While these coins technically exist on the blockchain, many in the crypto community believe they are essentially out of circulation due to their inactivity.
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According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin’s total and circulating supply is presently 19.81 million BTC, with a maximum supply of 21 million BTC.
Ripple’s XRP holdings are divided into two categories: XRP that is currently available in its wallets, and XRP subject to on-ledger escrow lockups that will be released monthly over the next 42 months.
For this latter category, Ripple does not have access to this XRP until the escrow releases it to them monthly. Every month, the remaining XRP released is returned to the escrow account.
