XRP (XRP) Price Chart and Market Data

This overview details XRP's supply structure, investment history, notable community airdrops, and active exchange listings.

What is XRP?

XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger. It launched way back in 2012, mostly for really fast, cheap cross-border settlements. It's basically a bridge currency. Actually, instead of the clunky mining you see with Bitcoin, it uses the Ripple Protocol Consensus Algorithm—RPCA for short—hitting something like 1,500 transactions a second. Every transfer burns a tiny bit of XRP (at least 10 drops), so it’s mildly deflationary. Lately, we're seeing it used a lot more as on-chain collateral for institutional DeFi.

How is the supply and tokenomics structured?

There’s a hard cap: 100 billion pre-mined tokens, meaning no new XRP will ever be created. As for the initial split, it was—well, 55% (55 billion) went into cryptographic escrows. Ripple Labs kept 25%, and the founders got 20%. People always talk about the monthly unlocks. Yes, 1 billion XRP unlocks every single month. But honestly, Ripple almost always locks 700 to 800 million of that right back up, which keeps inflation pretty tightly contained.

Who are the major investors behind Ripple Labs?

They've pulled in around $926 million across 16 different funding rounds. Early on—like, 2013—they grabbed cash from Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures, then did a $3.5M seed round with Core Innovation Capital. Later, big names like Blockchain Capital and Founders Fund jumped in. But the real standout? That would be the $500 million strategic raise in November 2025. Citadel Securities and Fortress led it, and that one round basically skyrocketed their valuation to $40 billion overnight.

Were there any notable airdrops for the community?

Absolutely. Since XRP skipped the whole ICO route, airdrops have been a big deal. The main one was the Flare Network (FLR) snapshot in December 2020. They allocated over 45 billion FLR to holders at a straight 1:1 ratio. The first 15% dropped in January 2023, and the rest sort of trickled out until February 2026. Oh, and holders also got Songbird (SGB) tokens—that's Flare's canary network—at a 0.1511 ratio.

Which XRP exchanges are best to buy XRP?

It’s pretty much everywhere—listed on over 100 global exchanges. Right now, Upbit is surprisingly dominating; their XRP/KRW pair is sitting on about 13.3% of the total volume share. Coinbase tracks right behind at 12.8%, which is the go-to for US folks. Binance is still huge, obviously, pulling 11.2% on their top USDT pair alone. Add in places like KuCoin and MEXC, and you can see liquidity is really well spread out across different regions.