There’s been a lot of chatter lately about what would happen if Ripple’s XRP had the same kind of scarcity model as Bitcoin. As you know, Bitcoin halvings cut the supply of new coins every four years, and those events have usually led to big rallies.
XRP, on the other hand, does have a burn mechanism, but it was never meant to pump the price. It’s simply there to stop spam by charging a tiny fee on each transaction and permanently destroying those tokens.
What you'll learn 👉
How Much XRP Has Been Burned So Far?
Since the XRP Ledger went live back in 2012, just over 14.18 million XRP have been burned. That might sound like a lot, but compared to the 100 billion total supply, it’s basically a drop in the ocean, about 0.014%. Out of today’s circulating supply of roughly 59.48 billion, that’s only 0.023%.
Right now, the network burns around 2,700 XRP per day, which adds up to about a million tokens a year. At that pace, it would take nearly a thousand years just to burn one billion XRP, or 1% of the supply. Clearly, the burn rate isn’t enough to create any real scarcity.
Here is #XRP Price If Burns Create Digital Scarcity Like #Bitcoin Halving.🧵🧵🧵 pic.twitter.com/OmTLmMo5Sh
— TheCryptoBasic (@thecryptobasic) September 8, 2025
What If XRP Worked Like Bitcoin’s Halving?
That’s where the fun “what if” comes in. CryptoBasic asked Google’s AI, Gemini, to imagine a scenario where XRP had something like Bitcoin’s halving.
At today’s price of about $2.90 and a market cap near $182 billion, Gemini said if the supply were cut in half to about 30 billion while demand stayed the same, the price could jump to around $6.12. That’s the cautious scenario, basically just doubling because of the reduced supply.
But halvings don’t just cut supply. In Bitcoin’s case, they’ve always created new demand and hype, often multiplying its market cap two to four times within a year.
If something similar happened with XRP, let’s say the market cap jumped 2.5x to $455 billion while the supply halved, the XRP price could hit roughly $15.30. Gemini even called that estimate “conservative” compared to Bitcoin’s post-halving rallies.
Read Also: Here Are The Real Reasons Why Worldcoin (WLD) Price Is Pumping
Why It’ll Probably Never Happen
As exciting as those numbers sound, Gemini made it clear this kind of system is very unlikely for XRP. Bitcoin’s scarcity comes from mining; halvings cut the reward miners get.
XRP doesn’t work like that. All 100 billion tokens were created from the start, and Ripple controls a big portion in escrow, releasing it on a predictable schedule.
The burn mechanism XRP already has is purely about keeping the network safe and spam-free, not about engineering price pumps. To turn it into something like a halving, developers would have to completely redesign the system, which just isn’t realistic.
However, if XRP burns worked like Bitcoin’s halvings, the price could easily double to $6 or even run up toward $15 with enough demand.
But that’s not how the system was built. In reality, XRP’s price will continue to depend on adoption, demand, and the broader market, not on forced scarcity events.
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