- XRP-USD
+6.43%
Australian lawyer and digital assets enthusiast Bill Morgan flagged something unusual while reviewing a registration statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the Cryptex Digital Market Cap ETF.
The filing, submitted on Aug. 25, assigned XRP a portfolio weight of approximately 4.88%.
Inside the prospectus, Morgan found that Ripple has indicated it could release additional XRP from escrow to support on-ledger liquidity for stablecoin and foreign exchange trading pairs if the CLARITY Act is passed.
Note that the document doesn’t represent an SEC finding or an announcement from Ripple.
Morgan posted on X that he could not recall Ripple making any such statement publicly before and questioned the
“It cites that Ripple has indicated that if regulatory clarity is established by passage of the CLARITY Act it might release additional XRP from escrow to meet on-ledger liquidity in stablecoin and FX pairs. I do not recall any statement from Ripple to this effect and wonder what is the
How Ripple’s escrow system works
According to Ripple, the crypto firm created its escrow system in Dec 2017, locking 55 billion XRP into time-based smart contracts on the XRP Ledger.
Under the existing structure, up to 1 billion XRP is released on the first day of each month.
Ripple has historically re-locked between 60% and 80% of each monthly release back into new escrow contracts, resulting in a net increase in circulating supply of approximately 200 million to 400 million XRP per month.
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What the filing says
The statement in the SEC filing suggests Ripple could retain a larger portion of future monthly releases rather than re-locking them if demand for XRP-based liquidity rises following regulatory changes, Morgan said.
“The company has indicated that, if regulatory clarity is established (e.g.,, it may release additional XRP from escrow to support on-ledger liquidity in stablecoin and FX pairs,” the filing mentions
Note that neither does the filing identify a Ripple representative or a
