If you're an XRP holder, I want you to see this message, because I love you and I want you to be successful with your crypto investing. I don't want you to get ripped off or lose money. I've been in crypto for 11 years. I've held XRP a bunch of different times. I've researched thousands and thousands of altcoins. And there's something you really need to know about XRP that almost nobody else is talking about.
First off, I'm not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. This is educational and, I hope, entertaining material for you to digest and think about. Don't take any immediate action. And know that I hold over 10,000 ICP, or Internet Computer Protocol, so that will clearly influence what I have to say.
Why I'm skeptical of XRP's market cap
That said, when I look at XRP today, the reality I see is that this is one of the highest market cap cryptocurrencies. And what I've seen in the past is that the best money is not usually made in the highest market cap cryptocurrencies, unless you go back a decade plus and get into Bitcoin like I did. The money is usually made in the smaller coins before they get big. So there's an opportunity cost.
The biggest thing I see right now came out of the XRP hype videos I watched before making this. One of them said something that, to me, is the absolute most important thing you need to be thinking about. They said the number one threat they saw to XRP would be if someone came out with technology so good that it made XRP irrelevant. And they said they weren't aware of anything, that the coast seemed clear, and that XRP was going to be dominant in a new financial system.
The technology that already exists
But what happens when you research Internet Computer Protocol and you realize the technology that XRP hype video host claimed doesn't exist is already out there? In my view, it does way more transactions, way faster, way cheaper than XRP does. And it does something nothing else in crypto does: you can put the entire blockchain, your whole tech stack, fully on chain. That means your website, your database, AI, crypto games, any kind of game. The Internet Computer Protocol solves massive real-world problems with cybercrime by putting everything on a blockchain.
Right now, the reality as I see it is that almost all XRP transactions happen through centralized third parties. They don't even happen on the blockchain. To me, investing in XRP seems similar to just investing in a bank, or in some centralized entity like a government. Because if you look at the actual XRP transactions, I don't see that there's been much growth looking at the XRP scan metrics. In the last year, despite all the hype and all the marketing, the real transactions on the blockchain are not up that much, not compared to something like Solana or like Internet Computer Protocol.
If you look at the actual number of new developers building with XRP, according to Electric Capital's report, it was way less than Internet Computer Protocol, which has a market cap almost 100 times smaller than XRP. These are serious concerns that I, as someone who has held XRP, would want to know, but almost nobody hyping XRP wants to tell you this.
Tokenomics and insiders
I also see that XRP has a shocking amount still held by insiders. According to the CoinMarketCap website, about $90 billion, with a B, is still held by insiders. In my opinion, that makes this the absolute worst tokenomics I see in the top 10 cryptos, by far. Nothing else is even close to as bad. After over a decade out, you still have insiders holding such a large percentage of it.
What's even crazier is that if you look at XLM, which is a fork of XRP, they actually have more transactions than XRP. I'm going to cover XLM in another video, and I'm not bullish on it either. But if you have somebody who copied the technology and they're getting more transactions while their market cap is a tiny fraction of XRP's, then I'm extremely skeptical of everything I've seen with XRP.
If you love banks, buy a bank
The more I see what ICP's tech can do, and the more I look at whether XRP is actually delivering a new financial system, the less convinced I am. What I see is that the narrative around XRP is that banks are going to use it to send transactions to each other. My thought is, if you love banks, then why wouldn't you just buy a bank stock? Buying XRP doesn't give you ownership over anything except the XRP tokens. It doesn't give you ownership over a bank. It doesn't give you any control over the XRP blockchain. From what I see, you don't get governance from holding XRP.
XRP also does not appear, from what I see, to have meaningful decentralization at this point. You can debate me on that, and you can do your own research, but critics often point out that it doesn't look very decentralized. To me that doesn't even matter, because what can you actually do with the XRP blockchain without going through a third party, without downloading something? Even if you download an official Ripple wallet for XRP, you're still then on their tech. You can't go straight into the blockchain, because XRP can't serve websites. It can't have a database of things like pictures and videos and NFTs that are fully on the blockchain. You have to put all that stuff off chain, which in my opinion eliminates any decentralization that is meaningful.
The $10,000 math doesn't work
I have talked to people in person who are holding XRP and absolutely can't stand to hear what I have to say, because from what I've seen, all they watch are XRP hype videos. I've watched those videos too, and all they do is talk about price. People say XRP could go to $10,000, and that is almost impossible based on simple math. There's only a few hundred trillion dollars of wealth in the whole world, maybe 1,000 to 1,600 trillion. So if XRP were to 5,000X, or even 1,000X, it would be worth more than all the real estate in the whole world combined, which is ridiculous. And yet 1,000X for XRP wouldn't even get it 20% of the way to $10,000.
I talked to a guy in person who said, "Jerry, I'm holding 20 XRP, and this is going to help me buy a house down the road." I said, "How is 20 XRP going to help you buy a house?" He said, "When it goes to $10,000." And I thought, oh my God, have you not used a calculator and looked at how impossible that is? That would require XRP's market cap to be $1,000 trillion right now. Do you understand how much money that is? That's almost all the wealth in the world combined. It's ridiculous.
And what can the actual technology do? It can send transactions. That's what it can do. XLM can send transactions. Bitcoin can send transactions. Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, and probably 500 other layer ones can send transactions. So when you search for the positives about XRP tech, it's all about how banks are going to use this to send money to each other. What does it matter what banks use to send money to each other? Just think about it. What difference does it make whether they use SWIFT or some other system? If you want to believe that banks sending money to each other more efficiently is good for them, then to me I'd buy bank stocks if that was my angle. But if we're going to have a new financial system, it has to cut out third parties. I don't see why I would invest in something based on third parties doing more efficient transactions with each other.
Why I'm all in on Internet Computer Protocol
That's why I'm all in on Internet Computer Protocol. It's the only technology I see in the world that can truly cut out the middleman, where you can go straight to an Internet Computer blockchain totally for free. I can send you crypto without you going through a crypto exchange. You don't have to KYC. You don't have to get a third-party wallet like a Ledger or a Trezor to hold your crypto for you. With XRP, I have 10 XRP still stuck in a wallet today, because it wouldn't let me have an account and transact without keeping that minimum in there. From what I can see, that's not a sustainable business model.
So everything I see about XRP, except the marketing and the cult aspect, the "my identity," the narratives, those look great, and they're being pushed all over the place.
What I learned about the hype machine
This is also my own experience. I did an XRP hype video two years ago, before I understood Internet Computer Protocol, and it looked like bots pushed my channel. When I did that XRP video, it looked like bots came in and pushed it really hard. I've uploaded thousands and thousands of YouTube videos, so at this point I can generally tell intuitively when my video is getting hit with bots versus my regular viewers versus new people finding it through search or organic sharing.
What I can say is that I did a video saying XRP was going to go to $12. It was a four minute video with no substance at all, purely repeating things I'd heard somewhere else. And the bots appeared to push that video straight up to number one in search results. So when you searched for XRP that day, you found my video saying XRP would go to $12. At the time, XRP was at just 30 or 40 cents, and I said it would go to $12, again with no substance and no real research, just a quick look at a few things. Anyone searching for XRP within that 12-hour window found my video, and many of them probably already held XRP.
When I do videos criticizing XRP, those don't get pushed by bots. So if what's happening on my channel is happening to other channels, then most of the information about XRP is potentially being pushed by bots. I can't prove that, but that's what it looks like to me.
My bottom line on XRP
To me, XRP looks like an extremely dangerous investment. It looks like a very high risk of loss or low gains, and very low odds of getting any strong gains. That pump from 50 cents to $3, you missed it. I was holding XRP, not at that time, but I had thousands of XRP when it was 30 cents. I sold all of it for ICP. In the short term, I've lost on that. But in the long term, I believe I'm going to win huge. And I also invest based on my values.
To me, XRP looks mostly like hype and a cult coin, with technology that is pretty irrelevant compared to the leader, Internet Computer, and even compared to many of these other blockchains today, including XLM, which is a copy that has more adoption. I don't see any reason I would hold XRP today.
So, again, this was not financial advice. I'm sharing my own research and my own decisions. This is just information for you to digest and think about. Because if you're really committed to something, you should be able to, and you should even be curious to, hear the criticism. When you hear the criticism, then you're in a good position to have a well-rounded opinion. I'm aware of all the criticisms of Internet Computer Protocol. I've even come up with ones nobody else has talked about before. And these are the ones I see for XRP that really matter. If you want to go deeper on how I think about all of this, you can explore my Money playlist. I've talked to a lot of people who've sold their XRP into ICP, or back into their bank account, and they've been grateful they took the time to think it through.