by If you did not know yet, Bitcoin was introduced for us to have an option outside of traditional banking systems and even opt out of it if required.
However, after a surge in demands of Bitcoin, numerous cryptocurrencies proliferated and now there are more than 1300 as we speak today!
One of them is Ripple, which, at the moment of writing this article, is at number 3 on the CoinMarketCap and has even threatened Bitcoin’s dominance once in a while.
Just to put it in perspective, from January 2017 to January 2018, Ripple surged at a rate of +37,000%, an astonishing figure. To simplify it further, if you would have invested $100 at the start of 2017, the value of it today would be $37,000!
Keeping aside these insane rallies for a moment, there are a few fundamental differences when it comes to the usage of Ripple because it is not like Bitcoin or Litecoin. It is so because it is controlled by a company (Centralized) and made for banks. Also, for using Ripple in the day to day activities, you need to pay attention to few things which you don’t see in any other cryptocurrency as of now.
One of those things is ’20 XRP’ reserve that Ripple charges for using Ripple cryptocurrency which is quite confusing and mysterious to many of us until now. And this mystery is my motivation to write this article and tell you the actual reason behind the ’20 XRP reserve’.
In fact, this is one of the most common questions that we have been asked by CoinSutra readers. Whenever they try to set up any Ripple wallet, they are asked to transfer 20 XRP initially to activate the wallet. This also brings up other questions like:
- Is the 20 XRP gone or can we spend it in future?
- Is there is a way to bypass Ripple wallet’s 20 XRP fees?
Page Contents
What Is 20 XRP Ripple Reserve?
Ripple is a unique crypto asset which has built-in rules of minimum balance for using its ledger.
Similar to the minimum balance requirements of traditional banks, Ripple requires you to deposit and maintain a balance greater than 20 XRP at all times to use the ledger.
So once you fund you Ripple wallet address with 20 XRP or more, your account will be active and usable. This is a one-time requirement for a particular new ripple address which you always need to maintain. Once that is fulfilled, it is very similar to using Bitcoin or Litecoin.
Why Do Ripple Wallets Require A Minimum Of 20 XRP?
The 20 XRP fee structure is enforced on the Ripple blockchain to make it an anti-spam ledger where people don’t unnecessary open wallets. As of today, once you deposit 20 XRP, these cannot be withdrawn, something that may or may not change in the future.
Ripple’s Official Statement On The Reserve:
The XRP Ledger applies reserve requirements, in XRP, to protect the shared global ledger from growing excessively large as the result of spam or malicious usage. The goal is to constrain the growth of the ledger to match improvements in technology so that a current commodity-level machine can always fit the current ledger in RAM and the full ledger history on disk.
To submit transactions, an address must hold a minimum amount of XRP in the shared global ledger. You cannot send this XRP to other addresses. To fund a new address, you must send enough XRP to meet the reserve requirement.
What Do You Need To Do?
Now that you know that Ripple addresses or wallets have this special requirement, you should always first initialize/fund your ripple wallet address with at least 20 XRP.
- Thumb Rule: Always ensure that your outgoing XRP funds are at least 20 XRP when sending to an unfunded XRP wallet
The best yet easy way is to remember this thumb rule and you will never go wrong.
Also remember that if you send lesser than 20 XRP to an unfunded or initialized ripple address, your transaction will fail because the protocol level requirement is minimum 20 XRP on an unfunded or unused address.
What Happens If You Don’t Have The ‘Minimum 20 XRP’?
Nothing happens if you don’t have a minimum of 20 XRP reserve on your ripple address but you cannot use it until you have minimum 20 XRP on it. Any account under 20 XRP will be considered non-existent.
Some wallets and services will also show you a message reminding you of the unavailable minimum reserve and that your account is not active. To activate it you will need to send some XRP on it until it fulfils the minimum 20 XRP criteria.
Conclusion
This may seem confusing but I have done my best in uncovering the mystery behind the ‘minimum 20 XRP’ requirement.
To make matters more confusing, some exchanges like Poloniex charge you 20 XRP for deposit reserves, while others like Bittrex and Binance don’t.
I also know that 20 XRP is a lot in today’s time (approx 80-90 USD). So technically if you go to buy $100 worth of XRP, you will actually get Ripple worth $10 because the remaining $80-90 will be locked up as reserve.
That’s all from my side in this article. Do share your thoughts in the comment section below.
If this article helped clear your doubts regarding the 20 XRP mystery, please share it with your friends on Facebook & Twitter!
Here are a few other hand-picked articles for you to read next:
- Ripple (XRP) Wallet – Best Wallets For Ripple
- Top 5 Websites To Buy Ripple (XRP)
- Which Cryptocurrencies Are Supported By The Ledger Wallet?
Thanks for enlightening me about this side of Ripple . One downside is maybe this incentivises some people to keep their Ripple on exchanges instead of opening a wallet ?
Yeah provided your exchange is not poloniex
I also know that 20 XRP is a lot in today’s time (approx 80-90 USD). So technically if you go to buy $100 worth of XRP, you will actually get Ripple worth $10 because the remaining $80-90 will be locked up as reserve.
LOL NOT EXACTLY
RIPPLE ARE NOW 0.82 so it cost you 17$ to KEEP YOUR WALLET.
SO if you deposit 100$ 17$ will be taken for the wallet, you can HODL THE REST
80-90 USD HAHA I WISH I WOULD BE RICH !!! LOL
Say one has 100 XRP, can he withdraw all of them and shut that wallet ? or only 80 is withdrawable?
Only 80, I believe. 20 will be a reserve.
17$ are reserve… JUST HODL THE REST 🙂
I know it sux but RIPPLE IS #3 so it’s a good LONG TERMS INVESTMENT
So if i have 100 coins and i wanted to sell my ripple. Can i just sell 100 coins of do i have to sell 80 to keep 20 coins on my
Wallet. And if i do sell 100 coins will my transaction complete or will it fail and will
I lose all my coins because of this 20 coins reserve?
Which exchange are you holding on your XRP?
EXODUS I HOLD MY RESERVE THERE, Then EXTRA I Send them to BINANCE
i have the same problem with cryptonator! i exchanged 0.03 ethereum to 21 ripple in this site but they spended 20 of that amount to generate me a ripple address! now i have 1 ripple in my balance at cryptonator. my problem is that if it is a exchange it should not charge me 20 xrp o build a address because all exchanges use their own address provided to us for deposite, or if it is a online wallet then it should give me my private key to use this wallet anywhere with any site! All i see here is a scam that costs you 20 xrp to build a wallet address that even it is not yours! for the sake of that 20 xrp i should use cryptonator to buy and sell xrp from now on!
I have 27 in Gatehub. The much bigger amount I own are on Binance. So, are these 27 in Gatehub just lost. How do I ever get to them? I want to move them to Binance but can’t.
i got 50xrp holding by Gatehab. why stupid Gatehub charge that? they should be BUN!
Hi Sudhir, thanks for the article 🙂 Just wondering if you could please clarify something for me?
I am about to buy a Ledger Nano, but would like to buy some Ripple while I wait for it to arrive… If I create a new wallet now with MyEtherWallet to store my Ripple temporarily, and then my Nano arrives, is there some way to simply transfer the wallet storing my Ripple across to my Nano, without having to open a new wallet and pay another 20 Ripple?
MYEtherWallet doesn’t support Ripple.
You can store in a Ripple wallet for meanwhile until your Ledger nano S arrives. You can choose a wallet here for Ripple.
You can leave it on an exchange like Binance to avoid 20XRP fee twice but that’s not at all recommended if you have significant amount of XRP
Does the ledger nano still require the 20 xrp reserve?
It is not a minimum requirement by Ledger, it by Ripple labs, and yes it is still there.
Well ok, but let’s think in the future…. Let’s dream that one ripple one day will be 10 dollar. The reserve would be 20 ripple at 10 dollar makes 200 dollar reserve before you can actualy use ripple. This is not attractive for new users.
Ripple labs have this policy but I relate to your concern too.
How are they going to fix this if price goes to let’s say 100 dollars a token ?
Are they going to lower the minimum amount of token for a new wallet ?
Ripple will probably have to change the original design. ; ))
Probably, yes
HI,
thanks for such great article i using the gate hub for the ripple wallet it’s showing the 19.94 ripples i didn’t understand and they don’t provide any assistance regarding that can i cancel the wallet in gate-hub and re-open and other
If yes please suggest the good website for that any Indian made waiting for response.
This is crazy to have the limit of 20 XRP. It is OK for now because the price is still low, but when the price hit say $500 or even $5000 each, 20 XRP is a lot of money for everybody on the planet to have a wallet and use it as a currency.
If every wallet must have 20 XRP locked then 1 billion people on earth opening an XRP wallet then 20 billion XPR is locked (more crazy).
This could mean XRP will not be use as a currency at all but just for bankers to transfer money across borders.
I personally have tried it, if you hold 100 XRP you can send all your 100 XRP to another wallet, then your current wallet is now locked until you have 20 XRP in it. If you just have any amount of XRP that is less than 20 XRP then you cannot withdraw, that is all.
Well apparently i didn’t do my own research and this is the BIGGEST regret of using XRP.
I thought this is the cheapest and fastest transaction available but i just paid 20euro for receiving 100euro from my brother. So XRP, i will NEVER recommend it
Ive been using xrp for awhile to send funds from crypto.com to binance. Ive done it several times now, but as far as i know the reserve requirement is 10 xrp. Ive been trying to send some since friday, but the transaction stays pending for 12-13 hours, then goes back to my wallet. Is the reserve 20 xrp now? Why doesnt it say that when trying to send?