Schwartz Answers Long Awaited Question Regarding Circulating Supply

An interesting discussion arose among Ripple’s top executives on Tuesday.

The topic that was under discussion was whether or not the XRP that is locked up in Ripple’s accounts should be part of Ripple’s circulation or not.

Among those participating in the discussion were CTO David Schwartz, CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Director of Engineering Nik Bougalis, and several other developers.

Bougalis stated he didn’t have an absolute answer but would say he does lean closer to the side of XRP in escrow account being accounted for as inclusion.

Schwartz would go on to say “If I want to pay you a bitcoin, I can use the bitcoins in lightning to do it. if I want to pay you some XRP, I can’t use XRP in escrow to do it. That, at least IMO, could justify calling one part of circulating supply and one not.”

There's a practical difference though. If I want to pay you a bitcoin, I can use the bitcoins in lightning to do it. if I want to pay you some XRP, I can't use XRP in escrow to do it. That, at least IMO, could justify calling one part of circulating supply and one not.

— 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍 𝚂𝚌𝚑𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚣 (@JoelKatz) August 9, 2022

There is virtually no "good" way to define "circulating supply". Is Satoshi's BTC part of the circulating supply? How about Saylors? How about my BTC locked in an HTLC for Lightning channels? They are technically no different than an XRP escrow.

— Matt Hamilton (@HammerToe) August 9, 2022

U.Today broke the story and dropped these details:

A discussion was raised this morning by an XRP enthusiast about whether the XRP locked up in Ripple’s account are circulating and, if not, whether it conflicts with the independence of the two companies. All of the Ripple executives were called in to answer questions, including CEO Brad Garlinghouse, Director of Engineering Nik Bougalis, CTO David Schwartz and former top developer Matt Hamilton. Tiffany Hayden, the self-titled CEO of XRP, was also invited to the discussion. Nik Bougalis was the first to answer the user’s question, saying that while he did not have a clear answer to the question about including XRP escrows in the overall token offering, he was leaning toward inclusion.

The engineer was nevertheless adamant about resolving the issue and making XRP’s offer clear. Tiffany Hayden, responding to a question, said that XRPs from escrow accounts can be sold, and anyone can lock their tokens in a similar way. The speech then went on to Matt Hamilton, who in turn said that technically there is no difference between blocked XRPs and what happens to Bitcoin sent via Lightning. According to the former Ripple developer, if you exclude all Bitcoin blocked in Lightning transactions, the BTC supply will tend to go to zero. That is where Ripple CTO David Schwartz stepped into the conversation, saying that there is still a difference in these transactions because, while escrowed XRP cannot circulate, BTC on Lightning are able to move, even if only in the form of debt. Hayden and Hamilton also agreed on this point.

Why is the escrowed XRP not included in the circulating supply? If @Ripple and $XRP are truly 2 entities. Couldn't anyone escrow their XRP to get it "removed" from circulation?@HammerToe @JoelKatz @bgarlinghouse @haydentiff @nbougalis

— Xrpman (@XRPman33) August 9, 2022

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