Foreign Media: After XRP Accounts Surpass 8 Million, the Top 1% Threshold Drops to 44,771 Tokens

According to foreign media research, XRP Ledger (XRPL) surpassed 8 million funded accounts in August this year. As the number of accounts rises, the oft-mentioned "top 1% XRP holding threshold" has dropped to around 44,771 coins. The article argues this figure is not a fixed target, but will continuously fluctuate as the account structure changes.

The reserve reduction at the end of 2024 changes the denominator

The article notes that in December 2024, XRPL will reduce its base reserve from 10 XRP to 1 XRP, decreasing the cost of opening an on-chain account by 90%. This is considered a key reason for the rapid increase in accounts recently.

The author believes the 8 million account milestone should not be equated directly with organic user growth. The influx of new accounts holding only 1 XRP or low balances lowers thresholds for each holding percentile overall.

• Base reserve: 10 XRP reduced to 1 XRP
• Account opening cost reduction: 90%
• Current top 1% threshold: 44,771 XRP

Top addresses remain highly concentrated

The article states that if only disposable balances are considered, some large holders with XRP locked in escrow contracts may be underestimated. Therefore, rankings should include XRP held in escrow.

According to the calculations in the article, about 85% of funded accounts hold less than 1,000 XRP, with this segment controlling only about 0.43% of the circulating supply. On the other hand, 521 accounts hold approximately 78.6% of the total XRP supply, revealing high address-level concentration.

The article also mentions that the top 1% of accounts control about 92% of XRP, while the top 0.1% control around 85%. However, these figures do not equate to real individual wealth distribution, as exchange custody addresses and Ripple-related addresses inflate the concentration.

Exchange and Ripple addresses amplify concentration

The article says that among the top 500 addresses, 25 identified exchange addresses collectively hold around 14.7 billion XRP, about 14.7% of total supply. These addresses usually consolidate assets from many users and cannot simply be regarded as individual whales.

Ripple-related addresses also account for a significant share. The article states Ripple-controlled addresses hold about 35.6% of the total supply, with around 32.14 billion XRP in escrow, released in fixed monthly installments rather than instantly available liquidity.

The author accordingly believes that if identifiable exchange custody addresses are excluded, the holding proportion of the top 100 addresses would drop from about 64% to around 50%. This means XRP holdings are still concentrated, but raw address data overstates some of the concentration.

Lower thresholds don’t mean more dispersed holdings

The article considers that the top 1% threshold, which was over 60,000 XRP several years ago, has fallen to less than 45,000, not because wealth is distributed more equally across the network, but due to large increases in low-balance accounts raising the account total—the denominator.

XRPL’s supply mechanism supports this view. The total XRP supply was minted at genesis as 100 billion coins, and the protocol does not issue more; only small amounts are destroyed as transaction fees. In other words, the threshold compression mainly comes from account expansion, not new supply.

The article concludes that since the holding threshold is denominated in XRP, it is not directly affected by the coin price; what changes is the USD cost required to reach this threshold.