Ripple’s quarterly reports understated XRP released from escrow by $84 million

When Ripple supply schedule and escrow system were taken under a microscope by Coin Metrics, they noticed discrepancies between on-chain data and Ripple’s public reports.

According to Coin Metrics, the number of XRP released from escrow has been underreported in two quarterly market reports. The total difference between the reported figures in quarterly reports for Q3 2018 and Q1 2019 and on-chain data equals 200 million XRP (approximately $84 million).

Moreover, “escrow queue” implemented by Ripple works differently to what the company had originally announced. According to Ripple’s original report, when unused coins return to escrow, they would go back to the escrow queue to the first slot (that is to say the first month) with no existing escrow.

“On-chain data however tells a different story. It seems that instead of locking unused funds into the first slot (i.e., the first month) with no existing escrow, they were locked in such a way to maintain the fixed amount of 1 billion XRP in escrow per month,” CoinMetrics writes.

Moreover, parties potentially associated with Ripple have released as much as 55 million XRP from an address not associated with the company’s main escrow account.