Ripple has unlocked 1 billion XRP from escrow, a release valued at about $1.49 billion when it happened. That doesn’t mean the whole amount is on its way to the market. In most months, the bulk of it is put back.
The unlock is part of the routine release Ripple carries out at the beginning of each month. October’s arrived as four separate transactions, which an on-chain whale alert account flagged. They split into 400,000,000 XRP valued at $595,636,565 at the time of unlock, 200,000,000 XRP valued at $297,818,282, 300,000,000 XRP valued at $446,727,424 and 100,000,000 XRP valued at $148,909,141.
Most of the 1 billion figure is for show
For anyone watching for sell pressure, the headline number can look worrying. On its own, it isn’t.
Ripple has routinely returned a big share of each unlock, roughly 700 to 800 million XRP, to escrow right away. What’s left is used for operational purposes, ecosystem initiatives and other activities. That means only a fraction of the amount shown in the alerts actually ends up in circulation.
For that reason, the next 24 hours tell you more than the unlock does. The re-lock transaction shows how much XRP Ripple held on to this month.
How much is still in escrow
According to ledger explorer data, 31,845,130,805 XRP sits in escrow, or 31.9% of supply. Circulating supply is 68,126,080,636 XRP, equal to 68.1% of the 100 billion XRP total.
Next to those figures, burned XRP barely registers. So far 14,394,279 XRP has been destroyed, or 0.014% of supply.
The direction is gradual but easy to see. Escrow holds 31.845 billion XRP today, compared with more than 32.4 billion XRP reported months back.
There’s more happening on the ledger than the escrow story shows
This week’s more notable figures have little to do with Ripple’s treasury. More than 10 million x402 payments have now settled on the XRP Ledger, under three months after the network passed 1 million.
According to RippleX head of engineering JA Akinyele, AI agents paying for inference and data still make up most of that volume. Akinyele added that a wider set of x402 services is starting to show up across financial data, risk, credit and other agent APIs. Over the latest seven days, the run rate has been 500,000 payments per day.
Brazil is also putting real securities on the ledger. CSD BR, a central securities depository, is recording securities ownership on a public blockchain for the first time, using the XRP Ledger. It is working with Ripple to bring Brazil’s regulated capital markets onchain, beginning with BTG Pactual fund shares secured by Ripple Custody.
A single vote stands between XRPL and lending
Validators are currently voting on LendingProtocolV1_1. The amendment brings closed-ended vaults and cash-basis accounting to XRPL lending.
The Lending Protocol and Single Asset Vault amendments also can’t move ahead until it activates. If you’re waiting for lending to go live on the XRP Ledger, this vote matters more to you than the monthly escrow unlock.
If you’re watching the unlock because of supply, wait for the re-lock transaction before you react. If 700 million XRP goes back, Ripple keeps 300 million to spend, and that’s the figure worth trading on.
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