XRP — A Dead Coin Walking?

The inside story of Ripple, XRP and Toxic Waste

About your author: CryptoQuestion is an independent platform with free resources for the cryptocurrency investor. From an on-demand Q&A service to online courses, from books to our Micro Cap Watch List. Visit us at www.cryptoquestion.tech

A few days before Christmas 2020 Ripple Labs, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP, were hit with an overdue complaint from the SEC, the US financial regulator. It is doubtful if the two founders named in the complaint had a very relaxing Christmas.

Let’s start with a bit of background. Ripple Labs is a US based company that develops and distributes peer to peer payment solutions. One of its payment solutions is XRP, a digital currency which runs on the XRP Ledger. XRP is the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap even after the recent announcement of the SEC complaint.

On the face of it XRP is the driving force behind Ripple Labs. At one point in 2018 XRP reached its nadir, a market cap of $137B. The value in XRP, like most cryptocurrencies, is in the ‘compelling narrative rather than the fundamentals’*. And XRP had some seriously compelling narrative. There were the 100’s of companies using its payments systems, there were headline grabbing ‘partnerships’ with well known international banks such as…