XRP Zero-Balance Wallets: Who Still Locks the 1 XRP Reserve?

We won't do things. We only want to do things that are good for XRP. Uh I think what we're doing with rUSD is in service of that.

That's Ripple CEO on October 28th, 2026, the same day CoinDesk told 110,000 people that the XRP Ledger's own developers are building wallets with zero XRP in them. So, which is it? Good for XRP or wallets that don't need any? I read the code and the rule book behind it, and here's what they say. Somebody still locks up one XRP for every one of those wallets.

It just isn't you. And the upgrade it needs has nine of the 29 votes it takes to switch on. If you hold XRP partly because every new wallet has to lock some up, this one is about your money. That's a real part of the case. More wallets, more XRP sitting locked.

So, a headline that says zero XRP sounds like somebody pulled a brick out of the wall. So, here's the question for the rest of this. When a wallet opens with zero XRP in it, where does the XRP go, and who's left holding it? So, if you're feeling bullish, like this video and smash that subscribe button. We're on our way to 400,000 subscribers, and we need you to smash that button.

And if you're going to become the first millionaire in your family tree, confirm that by commenting 777 down below. And also, I'm giving away my 2026 altcoin trading strategies and crypto yield generation briefing for free to everyone who follows us on Instagram. Head over there @bullrunnershq, @bullrunnershq, or the official link is always also down in the description below this video. Let's run it. All right, bull runners, I'm Ryan Huggins, aka @winwithryan.

Welcome back to the channel. So, let's start with how it works right now. On Ethereum, a wallet is just an address. On the XRP Ledger, a wallet doesn't exist until it holds a deposit of XRP that it can never spend. That deposit is called the reserve.

Right now, it's one XRP per wallet plus 0.2 XRP for each extra thing the wallet holds. So, any other coins in there. Like the permission slip that it needs to hold a dollar coin, such as RLUSD or one of the meme coins on the ledger as well. It wasn't always one. Actually, in 2021, it was 20 XRP.

The validators, the 35 computers whose votes set the ledger's rules, voted it down to 10 that September and then down to one on December 2nd of 2024. And look what happened the day it hit one. 30,640 new wallets in one day. The most in the ledger's history. Make it cheaper to open a wallet, people open wallets.

Here's how XRP holders count it.

Reserve responsibility may matter more than the fee burn here. Using the documented reserve settings as a specific example here, if they wanted to sponsor 100,000 individual accounts, that would represent 100,000 XRP as base reserve responsibility. And if each account also needed one ordinary reserve bearing object, that could be another 20,000 XRP. And by comparison, 100,000 standard transactions at a minimum fee would destroy only one XRP.

That's the bull case said fairly. Every wallet locks XRP. And notice he says the deposit matters way more than the fees. 100,000 transactions burn one XRP. 100,000 wallets lock 100,000 XRP.

So, when a headline says zero XRP, it's aimed right at the part that matters. Why would anybody want a wallet with no XRP in it? Because the people Ripple is chasing don't want to think about wallets at all.

And really, we understand the problem. You know, everyone in this room really understand crypto, understand wallets, all these kind of things. But we're trying to onboard this next generation of companies that actually have no idea about how to do all any of that. So, you know, sometimes we even get stopped at the what is a wallet. We are still answering this question today.

And so, we have to remember that these companies are used to connect on a portal on a bank account and just move things and call it a day. You know, so using crypto and digital asset is a brand new thing for them.

That's Robinhood's head of crypto. Same week, same stage. He's talking about companies in general, not XRP. But picture that conversation with one more step in it. Before your customer can hold a dollar coin, first buy one XRP and park it.

And here's what Ripple wants instead.

That means we can kind of plug in our infrastructure, put it literally under the hood, so the customer doesn't have to worry as much about, you know, the wallet infrastructure and you know, acquiring and minting and burning the stable coin and that kind of thing. Um so, we're able to provide that kind of end-to-end service just plugged in like right under the hood.

Under the hood, the customer never sees the wallet. On October 13th, 2026, Ripple teamed up with Privy, the wallet company owned by Stripe. Apps can drop an XRP ledger wallet inside the product for payments in RUSD and for AI agents, little programs that pay for things on their own. Now, read Privy's own instructions for building on the XRP ledger. XRP wallets do not exist on ledger until they receive the base reserve, currently one XRP.

And then, your app must fund the wallet before it can submit transactions. Your app, not your customer. In Privy's own words, before any upgrade, the app already pays the one XRP. It just has to hand it over. And handing it over is the actual problem.

The rulebook for this upgrade is called XLS-68. It was first written in May of 2024, and here's how it describes things right now. Companies must essentially donate XRP to users with no controls over how they use it. Donate. A company gives a stranger one XRP so the wallet can exist, and that XRP now belongs to the stranger.

Do it a million times and you've given away a million XRP you'll never see again. Reading what a company really does with its XRP next to what the headline says is the kind of thing the fine print that we go through with people and clients inside of SGS system at Altcoin Pro on whatever they hold. Most people who get this far, they close the tab out and then do nothing with it. And if you're the one who won't, the first link in the description is there for you to click right now. Book it while they're still open and while this is still fresh in your head.

So, the upgrade lets a company be the sponsor. It puts up the deposit, but it stays the company's. Then on October 15th of 2026, two days after privy deal, a developer posted the code for the peace coin desk wrote about. Create new sponsored account with zero balance. That's the zero XRP wallet.

It's real code, but it rides on top of the sponsored upgrade and that one already ran into trouble. On August 7th of 2026, two developers tested the sponsor upgrade on the practice network reported a hole. Remember why the deposit exists? Every wallet and every item on the ledger takes up space on every server that runs the ledger for as long as it exists. The deposit is what stops somebody from filling them with a bunch of junk spam once.

Here's the bind the XRP ledger's own engineers wrote down. Three things everybody wanted. The sponsor can leave anytime. Every item is always paid for by someone and the user can hold zero XRP. You cannot have all three simultaneously.

And here's why. If the sponsor walks away and the user holds nothing, the item is still sitting there with nobody paying for it. In testing, they made 30 of those for about 20 drops each, a tiny fraction of one XRP. Reusing the same money over and over. So, the zero XRP idea broke the one rule the deposit is there for.

I know what you're probably thinking. So, apps won't need XRP anymore. The wallet demand is gone. I thought the same thing reading that headline. So, I kept reading.

And the interesting thing when I first got my Zommin wallet and transferred some XRP off of Coinbase cuz I wanted to be a sovereign crypto holder and hold it in my own wallet, I had no idea what a deposit was. I didn't even know you had to have a reserve in there. So, I can see how as a company wanting to sell something and using the XRP ledger could be very cumbersome and scare away customers possibly. But here's how they closed the hole. They took away the sponsor's exit.

Once a company sponsors a wallet, it can't just pull its XRP back. It's stuck until the user covers the deposit themselves, another sponsor takes it over, or the wallet is closed. And that fix shipped in the ledger software on September 17th, 2026. And when you read the zero XRP code itself, there's no mystery about who pays. The sponsor covers the new account's base reserve.

That's the one XRP, same as before, and the rulebook says the sponsor must have sufficient XRP to cover every wallet it backs.

And, importantly I must say, this does not eliminate XRP's utility, period. In fact, it increases it. Okay? Think about this. The sponsor still needs XRP to cover the reserve requirements.

He's right about that part. The XRP doesn't leave, it moves. Out of the user's wallet into the company's. And in one way, the company pays more than a regular user would. A brand new wallet can get its first two of those 0.2 XRP permission slips free.

A sponsor doesn't get that back. The rulebook says the sponsor always pays the full object reserve. So, the wallet holds zero XRP, the ledger doesn't. So, let's put real numbers on it. A wallet that only holds RUSD needs the one XRP deposit plus one 0.2 permission slip.

So, 1.2 XRP at a $1.25, which is where XRP sat on October 29th, that's a $1.50 per wallet. An app with 100,000 users locks up 120,000 XRP and about $150,000. And how many new wallets is the whole ledger opening? XRP scan counts 92,918 in the 30 days before October 29th, about 3,100 a day. So, here's the part that matters for your XRP.

Per wallet, this upgrade changes nothing. Still one XRP. The vote that really changed it was December 2024 when the deposit dropped from 10 XRP to one. That one took 90% of the XRP each new wallet locks. This one takes none.

What it changes is who holds it. A person who might sell it next week or a company that can't touch it until the wallet closes. Now, this is an interesting setup because as a business owner, if you were to buy my Bull Runner's hat for $40, for example, and we have to pay an additional one XRP for every single wallet for every single customer. Well, it's a pretty simple fix. You just mark it up by one XRP.

So, it's not that hard of a problem to solve. The customer's going to pay for it. Almost like a tariff in a way. But, how are they going to factor that all in? So, when does it switch on?

Not soon. The XRP ledger changes its rules by vote. So, 35 validators, an upgrade needs more than 80%, which is 29 of them. And it has to hold for two weeks straight. On October 29th, the sponsor upgrade had nine of them.

Voting opened August 12th. Ripple's own validator said yes on October 14th. It peaked at 11. CoinDesk counted 11 on October 19th, and now it's down to nine. And every one of those 35 is already running software that could switch it on.

26 of them just haven't said yes. And that's only the first vote. The zero XRP wallet in that code is a second, separate upgrade. The code sets its default vote to no. It hasn't been accepted into the software yet, and an automated review flagged two open problems in it.

So, two votes, one at nine of 29, and one that hasn't even started yet. So, go back to the CEO. Ripple says it only does things that are good for XRP. Does this pass? Here's the honest version.

It doesn't add XRP demand per wallet, and it doesn't take any away. What it does is take away a reason not to build on the XRP ledger. A company can open 100,000 wallets without giving away 100,000 XRP to strangers. If that brings more wallets, more XRP gets locked. If it doesn't, nothing changes.

Either way, the XRP is still the deposit. And here's what to watch. The vote count on XRP scan, it's free. Any day. If it starts climbing toward 29, this is coming.

If it keeps sliding like it did since October 14th, it isn't. That's the whole thing in one line from an XRP holder back in August.

But that doesn't mean that XRP simply disappears. Someone still has to provide it.

The headline said zero XRP. The code says the sponsor covers the base reserve. Both are true. They're just talking about different wallets. What nobody can tell you yet is whether 29 validators will say yes.

Not Ripple, not CoinDesk, not me. Zero XRP is the number in your wallet, not the number on the ledger. Somebody still locks up the XRP. This upgrade only decides whether that's you or the app or the company. So, tell me in the comment section.

If an app paid the one XRP deposit for you, would you still buy your own XRP? Simple yes or no in the comment section. And this whole video came down to reading one poll request, one rule book, and one vote count. They're all public information, and they're all free. The headline said zero.

The code said the sponsor pays. And that's the job as an investor, reading the fine print on what you hold, not the headline. And that is exactly what we do with our clients inside of SGS system and Allcoin Pro. It's for people holding $50,000 or more in crypto, and have never had anybody sit down with you and map out where it really lives. If you're not there yet, we'll keep watching these videos, they're free, and we're not going to stop making them.

If this money is something that you invest with a spouse and you decide on together, bring them on the call for you as well. And it's the first link in the description. It gets you started right away. Just go book the call while it's still fresh in your head. And crypto carries risk.

Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. This is education, not financial advice. And you know what to do. Stay bullish. I'll see you at the top.