The intriguing debate on XRP’s status as either a deflationary or inflationary token has been reignited in response to recent data showing a whopping 11.629,982.79 XRP tokens burned so far on the XRP Ledger (XRPL).
Panos Mekras (@panosmek), a well-known crypto author and founder of DigitalGen, made his stance known, saying, “XRP is deflationary.” He made this statement in response to the post mentioned above, which came from an XRPL ambassador that revealed the burning of 11,629,982.79 (11.6 million) XRP tokens since the launch of XRPL.
The Debate on XRP’s Status
Panos Mekras’s post was met with a dissenting voice, offering a different perspective. The commenter argued that while XRP might be deflationary for the total existing supply, it could appear inflationary to XRP holders. He stated that XRP will always be inflationary from the holder’s point of view as long as Ripple sells it on the open market.
His reason was that market cap trackers calculate XRP’s market cap based on its circulating supply. If Ripple keeps releasing XRP into the open market, that illusion of inflation will remain.
However, Mekras presented a counterargument. He emphasized that the debate over XRP’s inflationary or deflationary nature had been going on for years. He also pointed out that all XRP tokens had been circulating since day one, with 100% of the supply accounted for. Mekras also pointed out that locking XRP in escrow does not affect XRP’s deflationary nature.
Mekras also added that it would make no sense if market-tracking websites like CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap excluded Ripple’s XRP locked in escrow from the circulating supply. He stated that if the websites didn’t track Ripple’s locked XRP, the same should apply to all XRP holders with tokens in escrow.
Mekras linked to a post from 2018 where XRP YouTuber Moon Lambo (@MoonLamboio) made the same point in reply to CoinMarketCap. It is also notable that XRP doesn’t use a deflationary model and token burns to drive up its price. The token burns are used as a defense against spam transactions.
XRP’s Market Cap
At $0.522, CoinMarketCap shows XRP’s market cap as $27.87 billion. However, the circulating supply is 53,387,299,665 XRP and is described as the XRP circulating in the market and public hands. XRP has a total supply of 99,988,380,689 XRP and a max supply of 100,000,000,000 XRP.
The value provided that shows the market cap based on the token’s max supply is the fully diluted market cap, which is $52.2 billion.
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