XRP is a currency owned and developed by Ripple Labs Inc., a financial technology company founded in 2012, based in San Francisco, United States. The goal of XRP is to facilitate international financial transfers between banks in a faster and cheaper way than traditional methods like SWIFT.

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Who owns XRP?

• Ripple Labs itself owned around 80 billion XRP out of 100 billion at launch and still retains a large portion of it in escrow accounts.

• The other 20 billion XRP were distributed to founders, early investors, and the market.

Famous founders of Ripple:

• Chris Larsen: one of the founders and one of the largest holders of XRP.

• Jed McCaleb: also a co-founder, later left the company and founded Stellar (XLM), and owned billions of XRP, most of which he sold.

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How many XRP coins are there?

• The maximum number of XRP coins is 100 billion (Fixed supply – cannot be mined).

• Currently, the circulating supply is less than that, as Ripple releases a specified amount each month from the escrow account, and any unused amount is automatically returned.