Ripple co-founder is now richer than the Google founders on paper

The thing that makes me bearish about Ripple's price is that so little of the currency is in the hands of the public. From what I've read, total amount of XRP is fixed at 100B, but it seems like only about 1.3B units are in actual circulation, with the other 98.7B units held by Ripple Labs, the founders, or institutional partners. ~37B is 'held' by these entities (mostly the founders I think), and another ~60B is locked up in smart contracts to slowly release these remaining funds to these actors at a rate of up to 1B per month.

I find it concerning that so many people are valuing Ripple off the 'market cap' because the 'true' circulating supply is much less than the commonly used figure of 38B. If the 'true' circulating supply is only 1.3B, what will happen when founders and partners start to cash out their ~30x greater stake then what is currently on the market? Can the market absorb 30x more supply?

Does anyone have a good source on what amount of Ripple is held by the 'public' (vs those with direct business relationships with Ripple Labs)?

Disclaimer: I'm long Bitcoin, and not a Ripple expert. Have been a detractor for several years: don't like the technical design, reliance on network effects, and amount of centralization.

There isn't any depth to the ripple price. If I created 1 trillion digital yakitori coins and I got my father to buy 1 yakitori coin for $10, I am theoretically worth about $10 trillion. "Theoretically". Will journalist at cnbc do an article on that?

Is it me or are the media pushing out a ridiculous amount of clickbait lately? Or am I just more aware of it because of HN.

What's crazy is this isn't journalism. The article comes off more as a paid advertisement for ripple than an article.

Ripple is certainly an interesting technology to have emerged in the Blockchain sector and one of the few which has serious commitments from outside relevant parties.

This has come with compromises, and while I do applaud their business acumen and look suspiciously at their centralization, it’s honestly out of my mind how it could be valued at such a high price and I’m not so sure that market capitalization can be a valuable indicator, due to their centralized approach, both in functioning and ownership.

Let’s see where all this goes in the following months, it’ll be a fun ride