Can Ripple Mint More XRP Tokens? Here are the Facts

Ripple has been the subject of a recent discussion surrounding the potential minting of more XRP tokens, with certain individuals raising concerns in a series of remarks.

Recently, there have been assertions that Ripple has the capacity to mint more XRP tokens beyond those currently in circulation and escrow wallets. The catalyst for this discourse was a post made yesterday by an X user identified as Internet Dollar.

Notably, Ariel, a well-known internet personality, recently provided a series of projections outlining the potential sequence of predicted future events. Among these forecasts is the anticipation of a substantial surge in XRP’s price following the revaluation of digital currency.

Goodmorning to you all. Been a minute since I said that. So while I am up I guess I will say something pertinent to the current situation we are facing at this crucial economic time. I think what we are waiting for could happen in this order.

Evergrande Collapse

Banking Crash…

— Ariel (@Prolotario1) January 30, 2024

In response, “Internet Dollar” disagreed with the prediction of an XRP price surge. According to him, XRP is too centralized to be worth anything. The individual contends that, despite potential pumps, XRP has a bleak long-term future, as more tokens could be printed.

The comment sparked reactions from commentators who ridiculed the perceived ignorance regarding the claim of additional XRP minting. XRP has a predetermined maximum supply of 100 billion tokens, minted in 2012 during the inception of the XRP Ledger (XRPL).

Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto and David Schwartz, the original architects of the XRPL, built it as an independent project. XRP originally existed to power the network as a gas token for consuming network resources. XRPL Labs founder Wietse Wind confirmed this in a remark last year.

Can Ripple Mint More XRP?

Ripple (then OpenCoin) emerged as a fintech company with a goal to develop more use cases for XRP. Ripple received 80% of the XRP supply as a gift, with McCaleb serving as the firm’s CTO, Schwartz as Chief Cryptography Officer and Britto as advisor.

Notably, most of the XRP supply was shared among the visionaries behind the XRPL and Ripple. Ripple locked up most of its share as a company in escrow wallets. The company has been releasing some XRP tokens every month to meet liquidity demands.

Ever since, while XRP’s circulating supply has fluctuated due to the escrow releases and token burns, the asset’s total supply has remained stable, as there have been no more token mints since 2012. Ripple also has no power to mint more XRP tokens.

Notably, speculation on this previously emerged, given the XRPL’s genesis block is block 32,570. Some individuals claimed Ripple minted more XRP tokens in earlier blocks and deleted these blocks to hide the incident. Schwartz recently debunked this, explaining why block 32,570 is the network’s genesis block.

Schwartz, who took over as Ripple’s CTO following the departure of McCaleb, confirmed that 20% of the supply went to co-founders and 79% to Ripple as a company. The disclosure was an attempt at bolstering transparency regarding the XRP supply and initial distribution.

Responding to “Internet Dollar,” Kyle Felker, an X user, stressed this fact. He noted that Ripple has given up control of most of its nodes, with plans to do the same to more. He emphasized that XRP’s supply remains fixed at 100 billion, with no extra mint events since 2012.

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