XRP attracts increased market attention because former U.S. President Donald Trump added it to the U.S. Strategic Crypto Reserve system. XRP owners see promising changes while experts probe deeper into Ripple’s transparent blockchain history because of the unexplained 32,000 XRPL blocks.

The first 32,000 ledger entries were ‘lost.’ WTF does that mean? Either it’s incompetence or nefarious. There’s no way to trust or verify the XRP ledger or what happened with the coin in its infancy.

The public has raised concerns because part of XRP’s blockchain history cannot be found. The starting point of XRP’s challenges was when David Schwartz, Arthur Britto, and Jed McCaleb launched the Ripple ledger system in 2012. Right after launch the first 32,570 blocks of the network history became inaccessible to public examination.

Many people believe that Ripple hid details about its token distribution when its blockchain history went missing in 2012. In his evaluation Bitcoin Dad reports that Ripple Labs manages the cryptocurrency supply with tight control because they hold 44% of XRP. Some people see XRP as less decentralized than Bitcoin and they debate the issue in crypto circles because of Ripple Labs’ control over the tokens.

1. The first 32,000 ledger entries were "lost".

WTF does that mean? Either it's incompetence or nefarious.

There's really no way to trust or verify the XRP ledger or what happened with the coin in it's infancy. This alone is totally unacceptable.

But it gets worse… pic.twitter.com/CxmWPAMgii

— Bitcoin Dad (@bitcoin_dad) January 24, 2025

Schwartz Blames Early System Failure For Missing Blocks

According to David Schwartz as Ripple CTO these blocks went missing because of a system failure during the early years. Schwartz explains that a programming error in Ripple’s original servers deleted relevant database data in January 2013 but created an unresolvable transaction issue. He states the issue does not affect account balances correctness or network protection today.

The debate about XRP entered public view again when Trump announced it would join the assets in the U.S. Strategic Crypto Reserve. The government wants to expand America’s global crypto market leadership by building up its stance after regulatory limbo under President Biden.

XRP market value increased by 33% when Trump declared this crypto asset part of the national holding and other coins including SOL and ADA experienced growth. 

Bitcoin supporters believe a state-backed reserve must feature Bitcoin alone as the single crypto asset. Financial analyst Peter Schiff and other doubters expressed reservations about placing XRP into the reserve since its transaction history still lacks transparency.

Schwartz maintains that the missing blocks problem does not affect the security and functionality of Ripple’s system. He mentions that blockchain issues occur with multiple digital assets beyond XRP and that other networks struggle with the same issues as Ethereum.

Crypto Community Demands Answers On XRP’s Missing Blocks

The crypto community still questions this situation because of ongoing doubts about it. People who distrust XRP want full details about the missing blocks to protect the token’s future trustworthiness and reliable supply system.

Under Trump’s leadership the United States started adopting cryptocurrency as official policy. The decision to include altcoins in the strategic reserve shows that authorities accept crypto as a complete industry platform. Opinion leaders predict that if Trump placed XRP in the reserve instead of Bitcoin XRP value would likely increase to $1000.

XRP’s participation in U.S. crypto policy creation will either confirm or challenge its current market role, even though we still don’t know what happened to the missing 32K blocks. The crypto community anticipates whether more scrutiny or broader usage will happen after XRP takes center stage in this market evolution.