For all the blockchains there are addresses that have more assets than others, the so-called “whales”, and even the Ripple blockchain has some addresses that have the most XRP: here is the top 10.
In the case of Ripple, it’s worth mentioning that it’s an asset where all the supply has been pre-mined and 50% is still in the hands of Ripple, so this ranking will also take into account other positions beyond the top 10.
All data are taken from here and we will analyze them in detail to understand who holds these XRP and how many.
Considering that with the XRP blockchain it is necessary to think in terms of billions, the first 4 positions are occupied by the Ripple company itself, with a total of 12 billion XRP that, at the current price of 0.21 cents, correspond to more than 2 billion dollars, to which also positions 11 and 12 that have more than 600 million XRP each must be added.
In fifth position, there is the Japanese bitbank exchange, one of the largest in the sector, which has 1.2 billion XRP, a figure that exceeds even the Binance exchange which is in eighth place with 953 million XRP and even exceeds the total of the Bithumb and Kraken exchanges, at position 13 and 15 respectively.
Position number 6 is not identified: by going deeper into the public address data, it is possible to see that it has been activated by UPbit and several transactions also involve Bittrex, so judging from the volumes it could be an exchange account, but it is not certain.
At position 7 there is another exchange, Coincheck, which has its user base mainly in Asia and owns 1 billion XRP.
The rest of the addresses have transactions to and from exchanges or from Ripple itself, but it is difficult to determine if and how much they are linked to them or if they belong to an individual and not a company.
From the data we have collected it is easy to deduce and understand that XRP is far from decentralized and is perhaps the one with the most centralization at the project level, since more than half of the supply is in the hands of Ripple and a good part is held on the various exchanges.
