Prominent XRP commentator Bill Morgan is urging Ripple to unlock tokens at a faster pace, with 32.74 billion XRP still locked inside the escrow program. According to reports from Crypto.news, Morgan argues that re-locking a smaller monthly supply would benefit the entire ecosystem. The XRP escrow is a programmatic system that releases one billion tokens to Ripple on the first day of every month, with the company deciding how much to redistribute into the market and how much to return to escrow for future operational and institutional needs. Morgan's position centers on the structural math, as the current release pace stretches the full-circulation timeline to roughly nine years.
Morgan's argument centers on supply transparency, as reported by Crypto.news. A faster release schedule would remove uncertainty about Ripple's long-term distribution strategy. Full circulation would help XRP behave more like a fixed-supply asset, which Morgan and several other commentators see as critical for institutional adoption over time. Some estimates suggest the current pace could take nearly nine years to fully distribute the escrowed XRP, though determining an exact timeline remains difficult due to variable re-locking amounts based on Ripple's internal business needs. Morgan's logic is three-layered: relocking less shortens the nine-year horizon, full circulation removes psychological supply that suppresses valuation, and a fixed, fully-circulating crypto supply is structurally more credible for institutional participants.
According to Crypto.news, Ripple's approach is structured around monthly releases through the escrow program. On June 1, the company unlocked 1 billion XRP through three separate transactions valued at over $1.33 billion, with the company later returning a substantial share of those tokens to escrow. Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz has previously defended the model, explaining that Ripple voluntarily relocks XRP so it does not need to be held immediately for business operations or institutional activity in both the United States and global markets. The escrow system was established in 2017, placing 55 billion XRP into 55 separate on-ledger contracts, each releasing 1 billion XRP on the first of every month, designed to create a predictable, auditable supply and avoid unannounced dumps from a centralized treasury.
As reported by Crypto.news, the current supply picture shows approximately 67.22 billion XRP circulating globally across exchanges and self-custody wallets, while Ripple still controls roughly 32.74 billion XRP in escrow. 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, while the pro-current-pace camp treats Ripple's controlled distribution as an asset for institutional credibility. Some holders have floated an even more aggressive option, arguing Ripple should simply burn its escrow reserves to permanently reduce supply, though Schwartz has publicly rejected this idea, citing Stellar's token burn as an example of a measure that produced only short-lived market effects. The community remains divided, with many supporting Ripple's measured distribution model while others prefer faster releases to calm long-standing market concerns about supply overhang.
