Burning the remaining escrow is an option Ripple has not ruled out, though its own chief architect has questioned whether doing so would actually move the price.
David Schwartz pointed to a 2019 decision by the Stellar Development Foundation, which destroyed 55 billion XLM — half of its total supply — without triggering any noticeable price movement.
A Complicated Question On Burning
Schwartz said Ripple could unilaterally ensure the locked tokens never enter circulation, and he added the company could replicate the effect of selling escrow by transferring control of the account that the escrow completes into.
CEO Brad Garlinghouse, for his part, said he does not rule anything out when asked about permanently destroying the reserves.
The comments come as Ripple completed its latest scheduled monthly escrow release, unlocking 1 billion XRP across three separate transactions worth more than $1.33 billion, according to on-chain tracker Whale Alert.
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) June 1, 2026
The largest of the three moved 500 million XRP, valued at roughly $666 million. A second transaction transferred 400 million XRP at around $533 million, while a final transfer released 100 million XRP worth approximately $133 million.
How Much Is Left
Of the 100 billion XRP that will ever exist, about 61.85 billion are currently in circulation, based on Binance market data from early June 2026. That leaves Ripple holding roughly 38.15 billion XRP still locked in escrow.
The monthly billion-XRP unlock does not mean a billion tokens flood the open market each time. Ripple re-escrows a large portion of what it unlocks, keeping only a fraction for its own use. Each returned batch effectively adds another month to the back end of the escrow schedule.
When Escrow Ends
Schwartz has also said the company voluntarily returns whatever XRP it expects it will not need, want, or use back into the system. That practice makes it hard to pin down exactly when the escrow will be emptied.
The XRP Ledger caps total supply at exactly 100 billion tokens, a fixed ceiling that cannot be changed.
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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