Just because you don't understand how something works does not mean it is not possible to do. ...
I asked you how to verify how many ripples exist and you responded with things like:
and
It looks like about in the right ballpark though, from looking at the distribution of XRP between wallets atm.
To which I replied:
That's a numeric statement posted on a website. That doesn't cut it.
and
That doesn't cut it either. It needs to be mathematically verifiable.
You then responded:
The oldest available ledger is #32570 (with about 100 entries) so this is currently the genesis one, the older ones are presumably lost or at least not available until JoelKatz finally publishes the transactions that took place in these first 1 1/2 weeks so these ledgers can be restored back to 0. Since then there is a unbroken hashed chain of headers (also cryptographically linked to the transactions and account state at each point of time). Nodes verify this by getting the most recent finalized ledger and continuing from there. Since transactions in Ripple only operate on account balances, not on inputs like Bitcoin, and you can only branch at the top not "mine" on an earlier "block", there is no explicit need for keeping history, not even headers.
How much value do you really think Bitcoin would have today if the blockchain's genesis block was "unavailable"?