Ripple has not ruled out permanently destroying (burning) the XRP it keeps in escrow — but its own chief architect says doing so might not move markets the way some expect.
David Schwartz pointed to a 2019 precedent from the Stellar Development Foundation, which eliminated 55 billion XLM (roughly half of Stellar’s supply) without any obvious price reaction. He argued Ripple could unilaterally prevent the locked XRP from ever entering circulation, and even mimic the market effect of selling escrow by transferring control of the accounts that receive unlocked tokens.
CEO Brad Garlinghouse, when asked about permanently destroying reserves, said he wouldn’t categorically rule anything out — leaving the door open while stopping short of a commitment.
The comments arrived as Ripple completed its latest scheduled monthly escrow release. On June 1, on-chain tracker Whale Alert recorded three transactions that together unlocked 1 billion XRP — worth roughly $1.33 billion at the time. The largest transfer moved 500 million XRP (about $666 million), a second sent 400 million (around $533 million), and a final release was 100 million XRP (approximately $133 million).
How much XRP remains tied up? Of the XRP Ledger’s fixed 100 billion-token supply, about 61.85 billion were in circulation in early June 2026, according to Binance market data — leaving roughly 38.15 billion XRP still locked in Ripple’s escrows.
That monthly 1 billion-XRP unlock is not the same as dumping a billion tokens on the market. Ripple typically re-escrows a large portion of what it unlocks, retaining only a fraction for operational use. Each returned tranche effectively pushes the back end of the escrow schedule further out. Schwartz has also said the company voluntarily returns any XRP it does not expect to need back into escrow, a practice that makes it difficult to predict when — or if — the escrow pool will ever be exhausted.
Key takeaway: burning Ripple’s remaining escrow is technically possible and has been floated by company leadership, but precedent and Ripple’s escrow-management practices suggest the immediate market impact could be muted. The XRP Ledger’s supply is capped at exactly 100 billion tokens, a ceiling that cannot be changed.
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