XRP is one of my least favorite cryptocurrencies. I think it's one of the most overvalued, overhyped, and dramatically over-speculated coins in the entire market. The technology does not impress me at all. So I want to walk through why, in my opinion, XRP is going to zero. It has practically been a stablecoin recently anyway. If you look at the last year, the price on XRP is the same as it was a year ago. By comparison, Solana has done a 10X in the last year, although it crashed really hard before it managed that. Internet Computer has gone up roughly 4X on its price in the last year. Bitcoin has gone up around 4X or so, maybe a little less. XRP has done absolutely nothing except pump and dump. And to me this looks like purely manipulated pumps followed by immediate dumps.
The court-case pump and dump
It was a massive disappointment to watch what happened when Ripple won its case against the SEC. The price immediately spiked to 81 cents and immediately dumped right back to where it was. I had some excitement about XRP before that, but when I saw that, I thought, this is truly an example of how bad this is. Even though everyone said the price was so suppressed because of the court case, all the gains that came from the court-case hype and from XRP being added back on exchanges were immediately lost within a couple of months. That is a shockingly bad performance.
XRP also hit its top price, especially against Bitcoin, back in 2017. It had a terrible bull market by comparison in 2021, and I think this next bull market is going to be even worse for it. I'm going to cover some of the data that nobody hyping XRP will ever show you, because this data is really shockingly bad and it directly disputes everything the XRP hypers say. This, to me, is the truth about XRP.
Some of the worst tokenomics in all of crypto
The XRP ledger starts tracking back in 2013, so this is an old crypto. And before I forget, because this is really important: despite XRP being out nearly as long as Bitcoin and longer than Ethereum, Ripple still has over 40% or so of the entire supply locked up today. XRP has one of the largest amounts of potential token dumpage on the entire market.
This is why, under almost every single scenario, I believe XRP is going to go to zero. The market cap today is around 27 billion dollars, but the fully diluted valuation is 50 billion, because Ripple is sitting on 20 billion more dollars to dump all over the XRP holders. The price can't go anywhere because they are constantly crapping on the market. That's probably exactly what happened with the court-case pump: as soon as the case pumps the price, Ripple immediately unloads on everybody. Anytime the price pumps, Ripple unloads, and it goes right back to where it was. They have billions and billions of dollars, 20-plus billion, waiting. These are some of the worst tokenomics in all of crypto.
If there actually was real crypto growth here, that might be one thing, but the XRP ledger growth is shockingly bad too. Even if all the tokens were already out, and even if the growth were 10 times what it is today, I still think it wouldn't be worth a 50 billion dollar fully diluted market cap. That's 10 times bigger than Internet Computer is today. By comparison, Internet Computer has the largest research and development team in all of crypto, employees with hundreds of patents, and they've solved really hard problems. They have the very first ever Bitcoin and Ethereum layer two on the exact same infrastructure. They have HTTPS outcalls, which eliminate the need for oracles. They have an entirely new way to build the internet, and yet XRP is valued 10 times higher than that. To me that's ridiculous. If you want to go deeper on how I weigh coins like this against each other, I keep these conversations going in my Money playlist.
The XRP ledger growth tells the real story
Look at the number of payments from one account to another over the all-time history of the ledger. Ten years ago, think how small Bitcoin was. Ten years ago, the XRP ledger was doing something like 10,000 payments a day. Now fast forward 10 years into the future, and there are only a few hundred thousand payments a day, and even that includes some recent, probably temporary manipulation before it dropped back down. Most of the time it's a few hundred thousand payments. That's the total number of transactions on the entire network, and in 10 years it has only done a 10X or 20X in real payments.
Think about how much faster Ethereum has grown. And at this rate, Internet Computer is going to absolutely blow this away in growth, because it's only been out three years and it is already doing so much more than the XRP ledger is after 10 years and so many billions of dollars. But what's even worse is how small the growth is in the last few years specifically. It grew about 10X or 20X in daily payments over 10 years, but in February 2021 it was already at hundreds of thousands of payments a day, and on some bull-market days it got up to a few hundred thousand. There has been almost no growth except for whatever temporary thing happened when some hyper launched something, and that quickly went away. There's been almost no growth in an entire cycle on the number of payments from one account to another. Some of these metrics won't even load properly, but if you look at things like accounts created, the story is exactly the same. This is not showing promising growth relative to the huge quantity of token dumpage.
The technology is years behind
Here's a good example of how the technology on XRP is so far behind that it's laughable. They're introducing the XRPL EVM sidechain. They're excited to bring Ethereum compatibility to the XRP ledger. But they're an entire cycle late for this. This has been around 10 years, and they're just introducing Ethereum compatibility now, while the blockchain itself can barely do anything besides centralizing transactions and creating tokens. So why do you even need XRP at all?
Bot networks pushing XRP videos
Some people are hyping this stuff up, and from my own analysis of my YouTube analytics, it appears there are networks of bots that push XRP videos. If you say the price is going to pump, you can say almost anything else in those videos and the bots will push your video like crazy. I wondered what happened because I made an XRP hype video myself, which I have since deleted, over a year ago, and I got a huge amount of views. My video went straight to the top of search results, which was uncommon, and yet I got almost no genuine interaction on the video. That's a big part of why I now only make educational material where I show you the research I do. Before that, I was just blabbing off the mouth, repeating things other people were saying. I've covered more of that turnaround in why I think XRP and Solana are destroying crypto.
The clickbait narratives: BRICS, $10,000, ISO 20022
Some people say XRP is going to be the new global reserve currency, and that BRICS is talking about using it. Just Google that and look at who is actually saying it. CoinEdition runs headlines like "BRICS nations: more blockchain payments, XRP floated," and when you read it, it says XRP is the group "most likely" to be used for cross-border payments. Why would you get excited about something Russia might use for cross-border payments? I don't see any concrete proof that Vladimir Putin even knows what XRP is. These websites are just putting out stuff to get clickbait headlines, and then you've got crypto "analysts," who knows what they actually know.
All I am is someone who shows you the research I do. I make educational material, I try to make jokes and make it entertaining, and I show you what I'm doing with my own money. There's no proof of anything I've ever heard any one of these XRP hypers say. I've never seen any proof at all of anything any of them have ever claimed. Look at this: the same CoinEdition website that ran the XRP-BRICS headline, five days earlier, ran one where someone predicted XRP would surge to 10,000 dollars. Then you've got these other people saying "XRP is confirmed." I guarantee you it's not confirmed, and this is not what's happening. These are clickbait headlines. I've been seeing XRP people say this kind of stuff from every single angle for years. The ISO 20022 narrative has proven to be absolutely fraudulent. All those coins have sucked, none of them have actually got adopted, and you need to think bigger picture, which most people don't do.
Everybody already does cross-border payments
If we go to the Ripple website and look at their use cases, what do they do? Cross-border payments. Yeah, 10 years ago XRP for cross-border payments was pretty industry-leading. Now? Do you want to see what else does cross-border payments? Bitcoin. Ethereum. Tether. BNB. Solana. USDC. Dogecoin. Did you know Dogecoin does cross-border payments? All of these do cross-border payments now. The competition is insane. USDC is huge on Ethereum, Tether is huge, and you can just pay in a stablecoin. I don't see why you'd use XRP when you can pay in a stablecoin. Cross-border payments and global money transfers, is this 1990-something? Everybody does cross-border payments now.
I'll tell you what does it better than anything else, in my opinion: Internet Computer Protocol. You can actually build an application like OpenChat fully on chain, completely on chain, and I have a wallet integrated right into it. I can send 32 ICP to anybody anywhere in the world right now. Not only that, I drop tips in my chat for people. I sent someone a half ICP just for making a verifiable-credentials post, and that's fully on chain. I don't care that a blockchain can send payments anywhere in the world, because they all can do that. Internet Computer is the only protocol in the world where you can build your entire website, application, NFTs, metaverse, and game fully on chain, and then integrate an absolute huge amount of tokens: chain-key Bitcoin, chain-key Ethereum, USDC, it's all in there. So compared to Internet Computer, XRP's cross-border payments are nothing but disappointing in my opinion.
Late to the stablecoin market
They just announced a stablecoin recently too, and people are hyped up about it. Well, congratulations on being late to the market. Here's a hint: Tether already has a 112 billion dollar stablecoin. Circle with USDC already has a 32 billion dollar stablecoin. Great job, let's all hype up XRP for being way late to the market with a stablecoin. It's on the XRP ledger, and XRP is doing so poorly that they also put it on Ethereum, because just using it straight on XRP there aren't enough people using it, as I just showed you on the actual ledger. There's almost no users compared to Ethereum. And yet XRP is valued at something like 8% of Ethereum, which to me is dramatically overvalued.
Tokenized assets, custody, and why builders choose ICP
Internet Computer, to me, is amazing technology, and most people are not aware of it yet. When you compare it to what Ripple is doing, Ripple just looks disappointing. They're talking about custody and integrating tokenized assets. Well, let me tell you who else does tokenized assets. Even Bitcoin does tokenized assets now, with all these runes and ordinals. Ethereum does tokenized assets, and I think they do a really good job with it. So does BNB, and so does Solana. And the Internet Computer, of course, has the best real-world asset protocol in the world, called Origyn, allowing you to put anything you want fully on chain. You want to sell houses? You can put the deed on chain, the pictures, the videos, all of it.
And why would a builder choose Internet Computer instead of XRP? If you want to do real-world tokenized assets on chain, then speed, scalability, and cost-effective data storage stand out as key advantages of Internet Computer over things like XRP. Internet Computer has the most advanced infrastructure and technology, and it's valued at 10% of XRP. There's no way XRP beats Internet Computer over the long term. Absolutely no way.
The central bank digital currency narrative
And you think I'm done? I'm not done yet. There's crypto liquidity, and then there's my favorite narrative: implementing central bank digital currencies. Let's all be oppressed together by central-bank-controlled digital currencies, and let's speculate that it's all going to happen on Ripple with XRP. Have you noticed that central bank digital currencies have flopped even in countries like China, where adoption was so low?
If I were one of these people in a seat of power, you know how I'd implement a central bank digital currency? I'd do it on Internet Computer. Why? Because the only way a central bank digital currency is going to work is if you can use it globally across all of your applications. If you can have things like OpenChat fully on chain, and websites like Jerry Banfield fully on chain, then a central bank digital currency would actually work all over the world and you could transact it directly on chain. You know what's not going to work? Putting it on XRP, which hardly anybody uses. I showed you the ledger; it's going nowhere.
I got roped in, and I lost money on XRP myself
I'm shocked by all of this. I had a friend who was so hyped up on XRP and these ISO narratives, and all he's done is lose money on it, repeatedly. And I even got roped into this myself. Somebody sent me an email, and they'll send you these emails too, which is now why I avoid emails. People send me these messages in chat, sounding really spiritual: "Jerry, you know, this is what God wants." And for some reason God wants XRP and BRICS to bring us a new central bank digital currency. Like, what? This stuff is ridiculous. I've never heard one XRP video that, upon further research, actually had any valid information in it in terms of XRP price speculation. Be very careful with anyone who messages you privately on Discord or Telegram claiming to be me, because it's a scam, a liar, or a fake account, and I don't want anyone losing thousands of dollars to one of them. If you ever want to make sure you're actually talking with me and the rest of the family, you can always join me directly rather than trusting a random DM.
And the chart so far backs me up: every single person who said XRP was going to pump, and hyped it, has been wrong for years. They've been going on about XRP since way back, and every single one of them has been blatantly wrong.
Adding XRP to my review spreadsheet
So I am really looking forward to adding XRP to my review spreadsheet. I'll log that I reviewed it today, and I said at 49 cents there's no way. In my opinion, there is no way XRP beats ICP's price action. I'll keep track of this over the long term for every single crypto I review, and I'll consistently update you. Yes, currently I'm losing by 2% over the first five cryptos I did. Let's just give it some time, because I'm certain I'm going to win over time.
I'm reviewing as many altcoins as I possibly can stand, and I'm knocking out all the ones people asked for. Almost everybody who's bought XRP, including me, has lost money on it at this point. I lost probably a thousand dollars in 2023 on XRP, because I got sucked into the hype. I exited XRP after I started to question the hype and did my own research. In my experience and in my opinion, it looks like a crypto investment that's going to zero. If you want my full breakdown for holders specifically, I put it all in Dear XRP holders: what nobody is telling you, and the on-chain numbers behind today's review are in the critical XRP data most holders never look at. You can also watch my newest coin reviews in my Money playlist.