The actual market capitalization of Ripple's XRP token is significantly lower than what is shown in the cryptocurrency ranking. The research company Messari came to this conclusion, publishing a corresponding report. As Messari researchers note, at present, with a capitalization of $13 billion, around 41 billion XRP coins are in circulation. However, of this number, 19.2 billion XRP may be illiquid or subject to "significant trading restrictions." This includes, for example, at least 6.7 billion XRP held under an agreement with Ripple by the project's co-founder Jed McCaleb.

Analysts also claim that these 41 billion XRP include 5.9 billion tokens that McCaleb committed to transfer to the non-profit organization RippleWorks, but he has not yet completed this process. The report also mentions 2.5 billion XRP that belong to RippleWorks and are bound by trading restrictions.

Additionally, restrictions apply to 4.1 billion XRP sold through XRP II, Ripple's money services operator.

Noting that the full volume of illiquid XRP tokens cannot be established without direct disclosure of data from Ripple, Messari concludes that the asset's stated market capitalization is overstated by at least $6 billion.

However, a Ripple representative disagrees with Messari's assessment. "This report not only contains several incorrect assumptions regarding capital freezes and trading restrictions, but is also generally based on an incorrect calculation of market capitalization. Although decentralized assets like XRP differ from traditional assets, the term 'market capitalization' always implies a very simple calculation: current price multiplied by total supply. Thus, XRP's current capitalization is around $31 billion," the company's representative stated.

In its report, Messari notes that in preparing it, it tried to obtain data from Ripple and RippleWorks, but never received a response. "Ripple does not disclose either the methodology or the data on the exchanges they use when calculating trading volumes. This is a critical value from the standpoint of trading restrictions. As far as can be understood, more than 99% of XRP's trading volume comes from foreign exchanges, many of which are suspected of wash trading," the report states.

According to the report for the 4th quarter of 2018, which Ripple published this Thursday, the average daily XRP trading volume was $585.7 million.