(Rejected) Ripple CTO Says Community Could Vote to Force the Company to Burn Demand Billions of XRP Tokens

David Schwartz, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Ripple Labs Inc., has said that the firm could be forced to burn its entire 48 billion XRP tokens if the community (validators) vote for it.

Currently, there are 100 billion XRP tokens available and about 50% of which are held by the company.

In the past, Ripple has come under fire from the community to sell off millions of tokens on a regular basis.  But in the recent time, the firm appears to have stopped the practice after refuting claims of price manipulation. In the second and third quarters of this year, the company stopped selling XRP tokens and began buying the coins to support its price.

XRP investors have felt the pinch as the token fell to a low price against the U.S dollar. XRP currently is trading at around 0.62 against its all-time high of $3.40.

But the cryptocurrency is expected to see a breakout to push its price beyond the $1 mark.

On December, 2, a member of crypto Twitter user asked the CTO what would be Ripple’s response if all validators, nodes, and the community at large come into an agreement that the XRP tokens held by the company should be burned.

Schwartz responded that majority rule would win in such a decision-making process. He said that the community could vote for the company to burn its entire supply of XRP tokens, mentioning that the blockchain is highly democratic.

He said: "Yes. There would be nothing Ripple could do to stop that from happening. Public blockchains are very democratic. If the majority wants a rules change, there is nothing the minority can do to stop them."

XRP Ledger amendments would require an 80% approval rating from validators of the ledger for the process to commerce. If the amendment stays above such a threshold for two weeks, then it becomes activated on the XRPL.

In November 2019, Schwartz disclosed that Ripple could decide to burn billions of XRP tokens in excess supply. It was during that time when Stellar burned more than half of the entire Stellar Lumens (XLM) tokens.