In the cryptoverse, Ripple (XRP) remains a powerful player. Despite battles with litigation and fluctuating markets, almost a fifth of its existing coins, or roughly 20.7%, rest in just ten addresses. Seemingly lopsided, the distribution widens further as one considers that rankings eleven to fifty possess another 29.4%. The remaining shareholders tally around half of XRP’s full circulation.
The adventure into examining who holds these stockpiles reveals unsurprising figures at its core. They are project creators Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse, plus several centralized exchanges including Binance, Bitbank, and Kraken, amongst others.
Finely balanced yet globetrotting across platforms, working on behalf of customers worldwide has cemented these holders with hundreds of millions worth of deep pockets brimming with their clients’ trades in digital currencies like XRP.
Taking A Deeper Look
The vast pool piloted by Binance owes much credit from its position as custodian for customer deposits kept securely away until needed or desired back into liquid assets again, thus, being responsible for almost three-quarters of the token’s total BEP20 variety. Coindex’s insightful data analysis puts them holding a majority stake of all coins on exchanges.
Unpacking the fascinating data reveals that the top ten addresses envelop roughly 11,015,437,195 XRP. This totals around $5.6 billion in market value as per current standings with an additional forty controlling another significant slice, seeing these fifty whales subsuming a somewhat staggering 13.2 billion XRPs. That’s nearly a third of the circulating supply.
The Ripple Founders’ Holdings
Diving deeper into this blockchain universe uncovers further interesting facts pertaining to Ripple’s founders and their substantial cache of coins—mostly a byproduct from when Ripple was first established.
Initial allocation records reveal that Larsen alongside co-founders Jed McCaleb and Arthur Brito each took control over large shares at inception totaling approximately twenty-billion collectively. But it’s worth noting patterns have shifted drastically throughout intervening years due mainly to lawsuits filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accusing them of potentially selling illegal securities, therefore, putting a crippling halt to potential sell-offs.
Moreover, the much-publicized falling out within Ripple’s circle resulted in McCable leaving his position and offering up his remaining stash for sale, which eventually came end after a prolonged eight-year period.
Allocation of the XRP Supply
It is important to note that most XRP coin stock remains in the hands of retail players. This becomes clear when one realizes how much trading volume comes from exchanges. There are about twenty-eight addresses each owning at least half a billion XRPs collectively controlling more than 20.2 billion tokens in circulation—approximately 37.9% of the full supply.
End Notes
It’s a reassuring thought that most of XRP’s supply belongs to retail investors but the movement of the aforementioned whales here is worth watching for as their solidary move could, in theory, cause major price movements for the asset.
