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Ahmed Barakat
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Australian lawyer and prominent XRP community commentator Bill Morgan has been in the news headlines as he called on Ripple to relock less of its monthly 1 billion XRP escrow release. According to Morgan, accelerating the path to full circulating supply would establish XRP as a credible hard money asset and eliminate the supply overhang that continues to weigh on sentiment.
The argument is not new in outline, but the specifics of Morgan’s framing push it into sharper territory, and Ripple’s own CTO Emeritus has already drawn a clear line on how far the company is willing to go.
With 32.74 billion XRP still locked in escrow and the current release pace stretching the full-circulation timeline to roughly nine years, the structural math gives Morgan’s argument its weight. The question the XRP community is now openly debating is not whether the overhang is real, but whether Ripple has both the incentive and the flexibility to compress that timeline.
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Ripple Supply Overhang
Ripple established its escrow system in 2017, placing 55 billion XRP into 55 separate on-ledger contracts, each releasing 1 billion XRP on the first of every month. The mechanism was designed to create a predictable, auditable supply and avoid an unannounced dump from a centralized treasury.
However, what it also created, by design, was an indefinitely extendable schedule: Ripple takes what it needs for operations and institutional distribution, then relocks the remainder into new contracts, effectively rolling the timeline forward month after month.
Morgan’s position, stated publicly on X, is direct:
The logic is three-layered. First, relocking less shortens the nine-year horizon. Second, full circulation removes the psychological shadow supply that suppresses valuation. Third, a fixed, fully-circulating crypto supply is structurally more credible for institutional participants who price assets on known fundamentals rather than unknowable future release schedules.
It is worth noting that Morgan is looking for an argument. He has previously defended the escrow mechanism itself against claims that it is a deliberate price-suppression tool. He also pointed out that XRP ran from roughly $0.50 to above $3.00 between November 2024 and January 2025 while monthly releases continued uninterrupted. His current call is for faster completion of a process he considers legitimate.
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David Schwartz Draws the Line
Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has not endorsed acceleration, and he has flatly rejected the most radical version of the proposal circulating in the XRP community: burning the escrowed supply outright.
Schwartz cited Stellar’s token burn as his primary cautionary reference. He argues that supply destruction produced a short-lived market reaction rather than a durable valuation re-rating. His broader defense of the current model is that Ripple voluntarily relocks whatever XRP it does not immediately need.
On the timeline question specifically, Schwartz acknowledged the inherent uncertainty:
“It’s hard to predict because you have to make assumptions about how much XRP Ripple uses and how much gets put back into subsequent escrow months.”
Schwartz’s position is structurally consistent with how Ripple has managed the escrow since inception. The company has positioned measured, predictable distribution as a feature, not a constraint. Changing that calculus would require Ripple to decide that the reputational and institutional benefits of acceleration outweigh the risks of increased near-term sell pressure. Basically, a trade-off that the company has not yet indicated it is willing to make.
Ripple’s recent MiCA regulatory approvals in Europe reinforce the pattern: the company is building compliant infrastructure, and supply stability is part of that institutional pitch.
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What the Community Debate Actually Reveals About XRP Beyond the News Headlines
Beyond the news headlines, the split inside the XRP community maps cleanly onto two different theories of what XRP is supposed to be. The pro-acceleration camp, aligned with Morgan, treats the hard money narrative as the primary long-term value proposition. A fixed, fully-circulating supply that can be evaluated on demand fundamentals alone. The pro-current-pace camp treats Ripple’s controlled distribution as an asset for institutional credibility, not a liability.
A third concern runs underneath both camps: if Ripple releases more net XRP per month without a corresponding increase in demand, the additional supply hits the market as sell pressure. XRP’s current price action does not obviously signal that the market is capacity-constrained on the demand side in a way that would absorb larger monthly net releases cleanly.
The token burn option, meanwhile, is effectively closed. Schwartz’s Stellar reference reflects a settled internal view that destroying escrow reserves would produce noise and would permanently eliminate the optionality Ripple currently holds.
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