XRP Ownership Concentrated Among Top Addresses
Market data reveals something interesting about XRP distribution. The top 10 addresses control about 18.56% of the total supply. When you look at addresses 10 through 50, they control another 24.85%. That leaves just over half—56.59%—spread across millions of smaller wallets.
I think this concentration matters, perhaps more than people realize. It’s not just about who holds the tokens, but how they’re managed. Ripple Labs, when you combine all their linked wallets, remains the single largest owner. Actually, if you count escrow wallets in the rankings, seven of the top ten XRP wallets belong to Ripple.
Ripple’s Dominant Position
Ripple Labs Escrow sits at the very top with 45% of the total supply. This isn’t just sitting there—it manages predictable monthly releases. The second-largest holder is Ripple Labs operational, holding nearly 1% of the total XRP supply.
Since XRP launched, there have been 100 billion tokens. There’s no mining or staking process, which is different from many other cryptocurrencies. Instead, distribution happens through escrow, allocation, and market transactions. Each month, up to 1 billion XRP gets unlocked, with unused amounts returning to escrow.
On-chain analytics show maximum XRP ownership rests with whales. These include institutional buyers, Ripple founders, and others. Japan’s SBI Holdings owns about $10.4 billion in XRP, which is significant.
Exchange Holdings and Trading Activity
After Ripple Labs, the largest XRP wallets belong to centralized exchanges. But here’s the thing—these exchanges hold XRP on behalf of users, not as proprietary assets. Binance leads with approximately 1.8 billion XRP. South Korea’s Bithumb ties closely with about the same amount after increasing its balance by roughly 30% in 2025.
Uphold and Upbit also rank among top custodians. Trading volumes on these platforms did well in 2025, according to reports. XRP actually outperformed Bitcoin and Ethereum on Upbit, making up 28% of the exchange’s 24-hour trading volume rise, which hit $13.39 billion.
Uphold’s data showed XRP as the most traded asset in 2025, bolstered by yield products tied to the Flare Network. Meanwhile, the Binance XRP/USDT pair saw a 69% increase in trade volume as the year began.
Executive Holdings and Market Position
Ripple executives are the biggest holders among individual wallets. Co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen has publicly linked wallets with an estimated 2.5 to 2.7 billion XRP. That translates to about 4-5% of the total supply. Reports suggest he’s realized over $760 million in profits since 2018, though exact figures fluctuate with market prices.
Brad Garlinghouse is also suspected of having one of the largest personal XRP holdings, though these aren’t publicly disclosed. Another co-founder, Jed McCaleb, was given 9 billion XRP in 2012 but completed selling his holdings after leaving the company in 2014 for approximately $3.2 billion.
Other large wallets are associated with anonymous addresses. One holds about 1.2 billion XRP, while another controls more than 700 million XRP. In total, the top 50 XRP addresses control approximately 43% to 50% of the circulating supply.
The coin itself trades at $2.06 with a minor decline of 0.17%. Compared to other assets, XRP has seen a decline in the last week while peers see small gains. This caused it to slip to a market cap of approximately $125 billion, being overtaken by Binance.
What strikes me is how concentrated ownership remains, even years after launch. The escrow system provides some predictability, but the concentration among top addresses is substantial. It raises questions about decentralization, though I suppose that’s a conversation for another time.
