XRP Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply growing · projected to keep growing

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XRP supply is growing even though the XRP Ledger never mints a single new coin. In the 90 days to Oct 20 2026, Ripple sent 918.59M XRP from its own wallets to the market, while ledger fees destroyed only 46,191 XRP, so circulating XRP grew a net +1.46%. The monitor reads +1.33%. The engine is Ripple’s escrow: 1B XRP opens on the 1st of every month, Ripple locks about 700M back and releases the rest, and 31.4B XRP is still waiting in escrow behind a hard cap of 100B XRP.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the last 90 days XRP’s circulating supply rose a net +1.46%: 918.59M XRP reached the market and 46,191 XRP were burned, against 63.13B XRP in circulation. The monitor, which tracks the same supply from market data, reads +1.33% for the same 90 days, a gap of only 0.12 percentage points, so the two readings agree and no warning flag is shown. For the next 90 days we expect about +1.43%, because three more escrow openings fall on Nov 1 2026, Dec 1 2026 and Jan 1 2027. XRP is a fixed-cap coin that is inflationary on its tradable float: a steady release of company-held supply, not new issuance.

Sell pressure: where new XRP comes from

Protocol inflation is 0. XRP has no block reward, no mining and no staking yield. All 100B XRP were created when the XRP Ledger started in 2012, and no transaction type on the ledger can create more. The ledger’s own supply count fell from 99,985,635,153 XRP on Jul 22 2026 to 99,985,588,962 XRP on Oct 20 2026, because fees are destroyed.

Vesting unlocks are 0 as a line of their own, even though this is where XRP’s story starts. Ripple keeps its reserve in on-ledger escrow, in contracts of 1B XRP that open one per month. In this window the escrow opened on Aug 1, Sep 1 and Oct 1 2026, 3B XRP in total, and each time Ripple locked 700M back into new escrow contracts within hours. Escrow fell from 32.3B to 31.4B XRP. The 300M Ripple kept from each opening moved into Ripple’s own wallets, and those wallets are not counted as circulating supply, so the opening alone adds nothing to the market.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are the real sell pressure: 918.59M XRP in 90 days. Ripple’s wallets paid that much to outside accounts, roughly 306M XRP a month, and on-chain the trail runs through a few short-lived transfer wallets into exchange deposit accounts. That is the 900M XRP kept from three escrow openings plus 18.6M XRP drawn from Ripple’s existing balance. For the next 90 days we project about 900M XRP: three openings at the same 300M kept.

Long-term locked or bankruptcy is 0. No court, trustee or bankruptcy estate is releasing XRP. The spot XRP funds and the newly listed treasury company Evernorth, which reports about 473M XRP, hold coins that were already circulating, so they add no new supply.

Buy pressure: where new XRP goes

A programmatic buyback is 0. Nothing on the XRP Ledger or at Ripple buys XRP back and retires it. Ripple’s buybacks have been of its own company shares, not of the XRP token.

The protocol fee burn is the only buy-side force: 46,191 XRP destroyed in 90 days, about 513 XRP a day. Every transaction on the XRP Ledger pays a small fee in XRP, and that fee is burned rather than paid to validators. The burn is rising with traffic: 8,698 XRP in the first 30 days of the window, 13,422 in the second and 24,071 in the last. Even so it removes about one coin for every 20,000 that Ripple releases. The fee rules did not change, so the next 90 days keep the 90-day figure.

A Foundation buy is 0. The 2.1B XRP Ripple locked back into escrow this window never left Ripple’s hands and was never counted as circulating, so it does not take XRP off the market.

A new long-term lock is 0. XRP has no staking, so there is no lock that pulls circulating coins away; the only locks are Ripple’s own escrow contracts.

Foundation and overhang

Ripple is the overhang, and it is large. On Oct 20 2026 Ripple’s escrow held 31.4B XRP, set to open at 1B XRP on the 1st of every month from Nov 1 2026 to May 1 2029, with a last 400M on Jun 1 2029. If Ripple keeps locking 700M back each month, that queue keeps moving further out. Ripple’s known wallets held a further 4.10B XRP: 1.33B in one wallet that did not move all window, 812M in another, 1B from the Oct 1 opening that had not been paid out yet, and smaller working wallets. Together, Ripple controls roughly 36B XRP, more than half as much as the 63.13B in circulation.

We read the escrow and Ripple’s wallets on-chain at every rebuild. If Ripple’s balance falls faster than the 300M it keeps each month, or the escrow stops being locked back, the extra outflow enters the Foundation row at the next refresh.

How XRP compares to other payment-focused Layer 1s

XRP sits in a small group of pre-mined payment chains where a company or foundation holds the unissued supply. Bitcoin and Litecoin are the opposite design: they have hard caps too, but new coins reach the market only through mining rewards that halve on a fixed schedule, so no single holder decides the pace. XRP’s 100B cap was minted on day one, and the pace of new float is set by Ripple’s escrow plus Ripple’s own choice of how much to lock back.

Compared with Stellar, another pre-mined payment chain, XRP’s release is easier to forecast. The escrow contracts have fixed opening dates on the ledger, and for many months the share Ripple keeps has stayed at about 300M XRP. Compared with proof-of-stake Layer 1s such as Solana or Cardano, XRP pays no staking rewards, so its supply growth comes from one company’s release rather than from paying validators.

On burns, XRP looks like Ethereum on a much smaller scale: every fee is destroyed. But XRP Ledger fees are tiny, so the burn of about 46K XRP a quarter is close to nothing next to about 900M XRP of release. XRP is not deflationary and will not become so while the escrow keeps opening.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Nov 1 2026, Dec 1 2026 and Jan 1 2027: three escrow openings of 1B XRP each. The number to watch is how much Ripple locks back; anything below 700M raises the release above our 900M forecast.

Ripple’s two loaded wallets: the 1B XRP from the Oct 1 opening was still unpaid on Oct 20 2026, and the 1.33B XRP wallet has not moved. A large payment out of either would show as extra sell pressure.

Ripple’s Swell conference in New York, Oct 27 to Oct 29 2026, where any change to how Ripple handles its escrow or its XRP sales would most likely be announced.

The fee burn: it more than doubled in the last 30 days of the window as ledger traffic rose. A fee change voted in by validators would move the burn, but none is scheduled.

Summary

XRP is a fixed-cap coin, capped at 100B XRP, whose circulating supply still grows about 1.4% to 1.5% every 90 days, because Ripple releases about 300M XRP a month from its escrow and sends it to market. In the 90 days to Oct 20 2026 that was 918.59M XRP against a fee burn of only 46,191 XRP, a net +1.46%, close to the monitor’s +1.33%. The key risk is the size of what Ripple still holds: 31.4B XRP in escrow and about 4.10B XRP in its wallets. The ceiling is the cap itself: no new XRP can ever be minted, so all future supply growth comes from Ripple’s reserve.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of XRP, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 20 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/xrp/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.