Can Ripple Burn All 41.9 Billion XRP in Escrow?

The XRP community speculates on Ripple potentially burning its 41.9 billion XRP in escrow amid XRP’s 7-day losses.

XRP remains trapped in a bearish trend over the past few days, with its cumulative seven-day performance nearing double-digit losses. Amid the unsavory performance, XRP community members have unearthed speculative discussions around factors that could bolster the price of XRP.

Most recently, the community speculated on the possibility of Ripple all the XRP tokens under escrow. In recent tweets, some XRP enthusiasts circulated posts along the line, “Rumors circulating that Ripple could burn the entire escrow of 50 BILLION XRP.”

It is worth clarifying that Ripple’s XRP in escrow is less than 42 billion XRP, as The Crypto Basic reported. An X user dubbed XRP whale, who also shared the supposed rumor, added that such a massive XRP burn would catalyze the value of XRP beyond bounds.

🚨BREAKING: Rumors circulating that Ripple could burn the entire escrow of 50 BILLION $XRP!

THIS COULD TRIGGER A HUGE PRICE SURGE!#XRP 🚀🌖

— XRP whale (@realXRPwhale) October 11, 2023

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Similarly, other known XRP influencer accounts on the X platform have posted about the Ripple XRP burn rumor without ascribing to any authority source. 

XRP Community Reacts

While some XRP enthusiasts welcomed the speculated burn idea, others dismissed the existence of any such rumor. They broadly argued the posters of the purported rumors were the originators of the claims. 

In parallel, US-based X user California Albert weighed on the conversation for the fun of it. He humorously sought the targets XRP could reach after the billions of XRP assets under Ripple escrow burn.

Can Ripple Burn all XRP in Escrow?

Nonetheless, the conversation about Ripple burning the XRP tokens in its escrow has been around for a while. 

Five months ago, former Ripple director and software engineer Matt Hamilton argued that Ripple could potentially destroy all the XRP tokens in escrow wallets, should it choose to do so. 

Hamilton shared this sentiment while responding to questions about Ripple’s XRP assets and their role in the legal dispute with the US regulator.

Moreover, the context of the conversation was the SEC vs. LBRY legal battle, where the SEC sought a court order to halt LBRY from conducting any crypto offerings until it burned all its LBRY Credits (LBC) tokens.

As a result, XRP enthusiasts pondered a scenario where the US regulator could require Ripple to incinerate all its escrowed XRP. Legal experts argued that a court order cannot ordinarily compel XRPL validators to eliminate the escrowed XRP.

On the other hand, Ripple’s CTO David Schwartz has previously affirmed Ripple would be compelled to burn the escrow XRP where validators vote to have them burned.

Similarly, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has also mentioned previously that Ripple might contemplate extinguishing escrow XRP where such a decision benefits the overall health of the XRP ecosystem.

Notably, burning the 41.9 billion XRP in Ripple escrow would imply setting over $20 billion on fire.