Shocking XRP Distribution: Ripple Execs & Escrow Control 45% of Supply in Top 50 Wallets
Nearly half of all XRP sits in just fifty digital vaults—and the company's own leadership holds the keys.
### The Concentration Conundrum
Forget decentralization; the ledger tells a different story. Analysis reveals a staggering 45% of XRP's total supply is consolidated among the network's fifty largest addresses. The usual suspects dominate the list: Ripple's massive escrow accounts, wallets tied to current and former executives, and a handful of early investors.
### The Escrow Elephant in the Room
Ripple's programmed escrow releases act as a central bank drip-feeding the market. Each month, a billion XRP unlocks, with the majority typically re-locked. This mechanism provides price stability—or market manipulation, depending on whom you ask—by controlling the circulating supply. Critics argue it creates a perpetual overhang, a Sword of Damocles hanging over the token's price.
### Executive Exposure
Beyond the escrow, personal wallets linked to founders and C-suite figures rank high. This isn't illegal, but it fuels the 'pre-mined bankster coin' narrative that haunts XRP in crypto-anarchist circles. It's the ultimate insider position—building the protocol while holding a fortune in its native asset.
### The Liquidity Illusion
A deep market cap masks shallow distribution. With such a huge chunk held by a few entities, true price discovery is a myth. Real liquidity is a fraction of what charts suggest, making XRP prone to violent swings if major holders ever decide to cash out. It's the finance sector's oldest game: create the illusion of a liquid market, then profit from the spread.
This concentration isn't a bug; it's a feature of Ripple's design. For institutional partners, it's control. For degens, it's centralization heresy. And for everyone else? Just another day where the crypto revolution looks suspiciously like the old boys' club—just with fancier wallets.
Max XRP ownership goes to Ripple, institutions, and crypto exchanges
Since the launch, XRP supply stands at 100 billion tokens. There is no mining or staking process for the token. Instead, it is distributed through methods including escrow, allocation, and market transactions. Each month, up to 1 billion XRP is unlocked, with unused amounts returned to escrow.
Data from on-chain analytics shows that the maximum XRP ownership is held by whales, including institutional buyers, Ripple founders, and others. Japan’s SBI Holdings owns about $10.4 billion in XRP.
Just after Ripple Labs, large XRP wallets belong to centralized exchanges that hold XRP on behalf of users instead of as proprietary assets. Binance is the biggest holder with approximately 1.8 billion XRP. South Korea’s Bithumb ties closely with approximately 1.8 billion XRP after increasing its balance by roughly 30% in 2025. Uphold and Upbit also rank among the top custodians.
As reported by Cryptopolitan, these numbers reflected that XRP’s trading volumes on Binance, Upbit, and Uphold did well in 2025. XRP did better than Bitcoin and ethereum on Upbit, making up 28% of the exchange’s 24-hour trading volume rise, which hit $13.39 billion.
Uphold’s data also revealed XRP as the most traded asset in 2025, bolstered by yield products tied to the Flare Network. Meanwhile, the Binance XRP/USDT pair, by trade volume, saw a 69% increase as the year began.
Meanwhile, the coin is steady with a minor decline of 0.17% now trading at $2.06. In comparison to the other assets, XRP has also seen a decline in the last week as its peers see small gains, which has caused it to be overtaken by Binance after slipping to a market cap of approximately $125 billion
Ripple execs take over 4% of the XRP supply
Ripple execs are the biggest holders of the individual wallets. Ripple co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen publicly linked wallets have an estimated 2.5 to 2.7 billion XRP, which translates to approximately 4-5% of the total supply. Although exact figures fluctuate with market prices, reports suggest that the co-founder has realized over $760 million in profits since 2018.
Brad Garlinghouse is also suspected of having one of the largest personal XRP holdings. However, these are not publicly disclosed.
Jed McCaleb, another Ripple co-founder, was given 9 billion XRP in 2012. However, he completed the sale of his XRP holdings after leaving the company in 2014 for approximately $3.2 billion.
Other large wallets are associated with anonymous addresses. One of them holds approximately 1.2 billion XRP, while another controls more than 700 million XRP. In total, the top 50 XRP addresses control approximately 43% to 50% of the circulating supply.
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