Lawyer Bill Morgan: XRP’s Escrow System Is Its Greatest Strength

Attorney and XRP enthusiast Bill Morgan argues that the token’s escrow mechanism, not any single upgrade or feature, is the strongest reason to believe in XRP’s long-term staying power. Morgan said understanding how the escrow works is enough to grasp why the asset will keep succeeding, describing everything else Ripple adds to the XRP Ledger as supplementary value on top of that foundation.

Morgan pointed to the escrow that Ripple established on the XRP Ledger as a mechanism designed to steady the token’s price and give the market confidence that Ripple would distribute its large XRP holdings in a disciplined, predictable manner rather than dumping supply unpredictably.

Escrow supply is shrinking month by month

According to data from XRPScan cited in the report, 32,444,984,760 XRP currently sits in escrow, while 67,526,296,210 XRP is in circulating supply, out of a total available supply of 99,985,640,485 XRP.

In a separate post, Morgan highlighted that the share of XRP held in escrow has been steadily declining. He noted that roughly a year ago, escrowed XRP represented just under 36% of total supply; today that figure sits below 32.5%.

Ripple releases 1 billion XRP from escrow every month under its standard schedule, but Morgan pointed out that the company does not fully re-lock the tokens it doesn’t use, leaving roughly 300 million XRP unreturned to escrow each month. Extrapolating from that pace, Morgan projected the escrowed share could fall below 29% by next July if the trend continues.

XRPL amendment and payment milestones add context

Morgan’s comments came alongside other developments on the XRP Ledger. The network’s x402 facilitator has reportedly settled close to one million agent transactions, according to the report, a milestone tied to the ledger’s growing use in automated payment flows.

Separately, the fixCleanup3_2_0 amendment, part of the xrpld 3.2.0 maintenance release, is currently in the voting process and has reached 40% validator consensus, per recent XRPScan data. The amendment needs to clear an 80% threshold before it can enter its activation period.

The bundle addresses precision and rounding issues affecting Single Asset Vaults and the Lending Protocol, fixes an invariant that was incorrectly firing on valid offer deletions within the permissioned DEX, validates non-canonical Multi-Purpose Token amounts, and adds a zero DomainID check for permissioned domains. It also introduces a new invariant, AccountRootsDeletedClean, intended to ensure deleted accounts don’t leave stray artifacts on the ledger.

Why escrow discipline matters to holders

Ripple’s escrow structure has long been cited by XRP supporters as a safeguard against sudden, large-scale sell pressure, since tokens are released on a fixed monthly schedule rather than at Ripple’s discretion. Morgan’s remarks reinforce that view, framing the escrow as the underlying reason the market can trust Ripple’s supply management even as new features are layered onto the ledger.

Whether the declining escrow ratio Morgan describes becomes a market concern will likely depend on how consistently Ripple manages unreturned tokens going forward, and whether circulating supply growth is absorbed by demand for XRP-based payment and settlement use cases.