Is Ripple Truly in Possession of 48 Billion XRP Tokens?

Ripple Labs, the company behind the highly popular altcoin XRP, has been mired in controversy over allegations of selling their own altcoin to fund operations. Recently, attention has been drawn to the large number of tokens the company allegedly controls—approximately 48 billion XRP or $100 billion worth, which it uses to fund operations and sells a portion of each month.

Ripple's CTO, David Schwartz, and a senior software engineer, Mayuka Vadari, argue that while these funds are in escrow and will ultimately return to Ripple, the company cannot currently access or use them. Despite the technicality, Ripple Labs is expected to receive these tokens according to escrow conditions, just as it has in the past.