The amount of XRP held in Ripple’s escrow wallets has reportedly been reduced from 55 billion XRP at the end of 2017 to 49.9 billion XRP at time of publishing.
Ripple, which owns more than half of the total supply of XRP, created the escrow program to manage its sales of the digital asset.
According to the escrow tracker at XRPArcade, Ripple has sold an average of 212.5 million XRP per month to institutions and crypto exchanges.
“At this rate, it will take 235 months (19 years and 7 months) for the last escrow to finish. In July 2039 (10 months ago the expected finish was April 2039 at a rate of 214.3 per month).”
Ripple’s ownership of XRP and its monthly sales are a hot-button issue in the world of crypto.
Back in August, Bloomberg published a report exploring Ripple’s sales as a possible cause of the digital asset’s market slide in 2019.
Despite XRP’s 39.2% price decline in 2019, Ripple strongly denies that its sales have had any impact.
“Ripple, for its part, disputed the increase [in sales]. Programmatic sales of XRP ‘as a percentage of volume and the actual supply inflation rate were lower’ than for Bitcoin or Ether, it said in a statement…
Sales had been tied to trading volumes reported by exchanges, and recognizing that some platforms were misreporting volumes, Ripple has ‘substantially reduced XRP sales,’ a trend that’s expected to continue this quarter, the company said.”
Also in August, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse dropped a tweetstorm further defending Ripple’s sales, which are used to fund its business and to invest in blockchain and crypto companies.
“XRP sales are about helping expand XRP’s utility – building RippleNet & supporting other biz building w/XRP ie Dharma & Forte. Reality is we DECREASED our sales by volume Q/Q and since then the inflation rate of XRP circulating supply has been lower than that of BTC and ETH.
Ripple continues to set industry standards in reporting and transparency (one example is our quarterly markets report). We lay it all out, and it’s not our ‘view’ but fact.”
Ripple sells to institutions over-the-counter and sells XRP on crypto exchanges at an amount of 10 basis points of the overall daily XRP volume.
Ripple says it sold a total of $66.24 million worth of XRP in the third quarter of this year, down from $251.51 million in the previous quarter.