What is the Real Ripple’s Circulation Supply? Depends Who are You Asking.

Today Coinmarketcap, the most popular site for rank ordering cryptocurrencies based on market cap, circulating supply and other relevant data, sent out a tweet stating the following:

The circulating supply data we are reporting for XRP is directly from the Ripple network stats. The "distributed" portion of the XRP supply is what is currently in circulation. The "undistributed" portion of XRP is not circulating as indicated by Ripple. https://t.co/jTcjaQg7gX — CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) December 4, 2018

The link leads to a list of distributed and undistributed circulations numbers next to their particular date.

Just yesterday, ForbesCrypto tweeted that they had updated the circulating supply of XRP to 99,991,780,039, which is the same as the total supply. Meanwhile, Coinmarketcap still has the circulating supply listed as 40,327,341,704.

Coinmarketcap doesn’t show that the undistributed portion of XRP is circulating, and cites the link provided as evidence for it. Forbes, on the other hand, believes that the full quantity of XRP’s supply is currently circulating, and the sentiment on Twitter (at least amongst XRP fans) seems to agree with Forbes. Supporters have pointed to this webpage as evidence for why the full supply is, in fact, equal to the circulating supply.

The discrepancy in XRP data reporting is not the only one between Coinmarketcap and Forbes. Coinmarketcap lists XRPs market cap as $13.9 Billion, while ForbesCrypto lists XRPs market cap at $34.44 Billion. Other stats, like 24-hour volume, are also significantly different ($114m on ForbesCrypto and $408m on Coinmarketcap).

It’s hard to determine at this time which numbers are correct. However, what does remain consistent between both sites is that XRP has overtaken Ethereum to become the #2 cryptocurrency by market cap, a position many still find hard to believe when considering how much Ethereum has contributed to the crypto ecosystem compared to XRP. Ultimately, centralized cryptocurrencies like XRP will always be followed by controversy because the way in which their coins were produced and distributed makes people question everything about them, from their intrinsic value to market cap and circulating supply.