XRP price prediction after the release of 1 billion tokens: what to watch now

Ripple released one billion XRP from its escrow accounts on Thursday morning, spread across four transfers of 400, 300, 200 and 100 million tokens. Measured at Thursday afternoon's price, that is worth around $1.49 billion. The price itself barely reacted: XRP traded at $1.48 to $1.49 on Thursday afternoon, just under one percent below the previous day, according to CoinGecko data. Anyone wanting to derive a forecast from this release therefore needs less of the chart and more of an understanding of what this money actually does over the next 24 hours.

The escrow is no secret compartment, but a series of trust accounts on the XRP Ledger that Ripple set up in 2017. At the start of each month part of it expires, and the company can dispose of the amount that comes free. What matters is that Ripple has put most of this monthly release back into new trust accounts in recent years. That return is the number which decides supply pressure, not the billion in the headline.

1 billion XRP out of escrow: what actually happened on October 1

It was the tenth monthly release of 2026 and it followed the familiar pattern. Four transactions, one billion tokens together, settled over the course of the morning. The specialist service U.Today puts the holding that remained in the trust accounts afterwards at 31.845 billion XRP. With a total supply of 100 billion tokens, just under 32 percent therefore remains locked.

Escrow explained briefly

An escrow on the XRP Ledger is a payment fitted with a time lock: the tokens sit on the ledger but cannot be moved until a set point in time. That is not a promise of trust and not a bank's undertaking, but a function of the protocol. Anyone can read which locks exist and when they expire.

31.85 billion XRP stay locked: the arithmetic behind the circulating supply

This is where it gets uncomfortably precise for investors, and for a good reason. The figures for the circulating supply differ markedly depending on the source. U.Today gives a circulating supply of 68.126 billion XRP for the point after the release. CoinGecko, by contrast, reports around 63.09 billion XRP as the circulating amount on Thursday afternoon. The gap of about five billion tokens is not sloppiness on either side.

Why two sources give different circulating supplies

The difference arises at the definition. Count everything that is not in escrow as circulating and you arrive at the higher figure. If a data provider additionally deducts holdings that demonstrably sit with Ripple itself and are not on the market, the figure comes out lower. For your assessment that means market capitalisation and any metric built on the circulating supply carry an uncertainty of several percent in the case of XRP. See two services with different market capitalisations and you have not necessarily found an error.

The second number in this arithmetic is the distance to the peak. The all-time high stands at $3.65 from July 17, 2025. From Thursday afternoon's level, around 59 percent is missing before that value would be reached again. The quarterly comparison looks friendlier: XRP traded at $1.05 at the end of June, which means the third quarter ended with a gain of about 41 percent, calculated on the CoinGecko values for June 30 and October 1.

Return to escrow within 24 hours: where the state of play sits in the ledger

This is the one point in this story you can work out for yourself, without waiting for a report. The XRP Ledger is public, and the escrow holdings of the Ripple accounts can be inspected there. The balance overview at XRPSCAN lets you follow how much of the released billion goes back into new trust accounts within the next day.

As an order of magnitude for placing it: in recent months the return has typically been 700 to 800 million tokens, leaving 200 to 300 million XRP for ongoing purposes and ecosystem programmes. If the return stays in that range, the actual increase in supply is small against a daily turnover that stood at around $2.3 billion on Thursday. Should the return come out markedly smaller, that would be the real story of the month, and it was in none of the morning's headlines.

XRP at $1.49: the next price target sits at $1.70

The range the price has moved in for days is narrow. On Thursday the daily high was $1.51 and the daily low $1.48, with a gain of 0.6 percent over the week and 8.8 percent over the month. In euros that came to about €1.31 per token on Thursday afternoon.

On the upside, the common market commentaries name two levels. The nearer one sits at $1.50 and is the threshold XRP failed at repeatedly through September. The further one sits at $1.70 and counts as the resistance capping October's range. On the downside the area around $1.25 is named. The forecast ranges of the data services diverge, and that is part of the picture: DigitalCoinPrice expects an average of around $1.37 for October, LongForecast month-end prices around $1.13, and CoinDCX a channel between $1.48 and $1.94. These are the respective providers' model calculations and not undertakings.

What you can practically take from this is less a direction than a size. A range of $1.25 to $1.70 means, at an entry of $1.49, around 16 percent of room on the downside and around 14 percent on the upside. Anyone working with leverage should set that width against their own liquidation distance before the next monthly release falls due on November 1.

US spot ETFs hold 1.18 billion XRP: why fund assets are shrinking all the same

On the demand side something shifted in September that has nothing to do with the escrow. The seven American spot ETFs on XRP hold around 1.18 billion tokens between them, which is about 1.18 percent of total supply. In the week from September 21 to 25, a net $75.59 million flowed in, $58.99 million of it into Bitwise's product alone, which with around 413.1 million XRP is the largest holder among the funds. Across September as a whole, net inflows added up to $121.4 million.

The apparent contradiction in this: despite those inflows, the funds' assets under management fell in September. That is no arithmetic error, but a consequence of valuation. A fund that buys new tokens while the price of those tokens falls can be worth less on balance than before. Inflows and fund assets are two different measures, and only the first says anything about institutional investors' willingness to buy. Cumulatively since the products launched at the end of 2025, net inflows stand at about $1.79 billion.

Fed decision on October 28: the date that decides October's range

The date the market commentaries point to most often for October is the US Federal Reserve's interest rate decision on October 28. For XRP that is no coin-specific event, but the usual connection: a market that lives strongly off risk appetite reacts to the rate path. That the commentaries put the date so clearly in the foreground has an uncomfortable side effect for the forecast. It means that expectations for XRP in October are barely driven by XRP itself.

For you this yields a sober order of dates in this quarter: the return to escrow over the coming 24 hours, the Fed decision on October 28, the next monthly release on November 1, and, as the last and most important date for your tax bill, December 31, 2026.

XRP ETN versus direct purchase: 25 percent withholding tax or free of tax after a year

Before the deadline itself, the difference many only notice on selling. There are two ways to bet on XRP in Germany, and they are treated completely differently for tax.

On a direct purchase you hold the tokens yourself, at an exchange or in your own wallet. The sale is a private disposal under section 23 of the Income Tax Act. If more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain is free of tax, whatever its size. Under one year, a threshold of 1,000 euros a calendar year applies to all private disposals together. The word threshold is to be taken literally: one euro over, and the entire gain becomes taxable, not merely the part above the limit.

An exchange-traded certificate on XRP, so an ETN or ETP at a German trading venue, works differently. The gain from it is investment income. On that, 25 percent withholding tax plus the solidarity surcharge and church tax where applicable fall due, and from the first day. There is no holding period there after which anything becomes free of tax. In return the saver's allowance of 1,000 euros applies, and the custodian usually remits the tax automatically. The running costs of such products are also to be considered, given as 0.95 to 2.50 percent a year depending on the provider. Which products are tradable in Germany and what they cost is set out in the overview of crypto ETFs and ETNs in Germany.

The American spot ETFs are not available to you

The US funds named above, with their 1.18 billion XRP, are in practice not accessible to you as a retail investor in Germany. These funds are not UCITS funds and supply no key information document under the PRIIPs regulation that a broker would have to present to retail clients in the EU. The inflow figures are therefore a sentiment indicator for you, not a route to investing.

Deadline of December 31, 2026: the draft bill and the one-year holding period

This is the number that decides more about your return this quarter than any price level. Since September 8, 2026 a draft bill from the federal finance ministry has been on the table that would bring the taxation of crypto assets closer to that of shares. The one-year holding period would fall away, and withholding tax would apply instead. The draft names a deadline for this: crypto assets acquired after December 31, 2026 are to be covered. For holdings acquired earlier, the existing rule is to continue to apply.

The placing of this matters, and in both directions. A draft bill is not a law. None of it is decided, and the deadline and its design can change in the further process or fall away entirely. At the same time the deadline, should it arrive as described, cannot be made up later. An XRP holding you buy in December 2026 would be free of tax after a year; the same holding bought in January 2027 would not. That is no argument for buying now, and none against it either. It is the point that with XRP this quarter the purchase date has a meaning of its own that the chart does not show.

What you have to document for it

The burden of proof for the time of acquisition and the acquisition cost falls on you. Without a purchase receipt the tax office can estimate the acquisition cost, and such estimates regularly turn out to your disadvantage. In practice that means saving the exchange's transaction overviews as a file rather than leaving them sitting in the account, keeping the order traceable where there are several part purchases, and noting the transaction identifiers when transferring between your own wallets. Tools that keep this record as you go are in the overview of tax tools and portfolio trackers.

Destination tag and MiCA licence: two stumbling blocks when buying XRP in Germany

Two things go wrong more often with XRP than with other coins, and neither has anything to do with the price.

The first is the destination tag. Exchanges keep many customers' XRP at a shared address and distinguish the accounts by a number attached to the transfer. If that tag is missing on a deposit, the payment lands in the pooled account without an allocation. The money is usually recoverable, though it takes a support case with evidence, and that takes time. On a withdrawal from the exchange to your own wallet the tag is as a rule not needed.

The second is the reserve on the XRP Ledger. An XRP address of your own has to keep a minimum balance that is not transferable. Set up a new wallet and transfer exactly the amount you want to hold, and you cannot activate the address with it. That is protocol design and not a fault of the wallet.

One point of context that has applied since MiCA: trading venues offering crypto assets in the EU need an authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider. Whether a provider holds that licence is in the supervisor's registers and not in the provider's advertising. And one more distinction, because it is regularly confused with XRP: the XRP Ledger has no protocol staking. Anyone offering you a yield on XRP is lending out your tokens or deploying them some other way, with the counterparty's corresponding default risk. There is no network reward here as there is with Ethereum or Solana.

XRP price prediction: The key points for your decision

The release of one billion XRP is the occasion of this day, but not the number that determines your result. Three steps follow from it:

1. Read the return before you judge the release. If it stays at 700 to 800 million tokens, the supply effect is small. If you need an account at a regulated trading venue for that anyway, compare the terms beforehand in the overview of crypto exchanges, because the fee on the purchase costs you something for certain, while the monthly release only might.
2. Decide the route before the timing. Direct purchase and ETN differ for tax by 25 percent withholding tax and on an ongoing basis by up to 2.50 percent in costs a year. What is tradable in Germany is set out in the overview of crypto ETFs and ETNs.
3. Save the receipts from today, not in March. Should the December 31, 2026 deadline become law, your purchase date decides the taxation of your entire holding, and you have to prove it yourself. How to keep that record as you go is shown in the overview of tax tools.

(As of October 1, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy. Tax information is not tax advice; the draft bill mentioned is not law in force.)