Ripple, the company behind XRP, has long faced criticism for ‘dumping’ XRP tokens worth billions on the market. Early cryptocurrency developer and Blockstream CEO Adam Back shared his thoughts about the recent interview that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse had with CNN. According to him, Garlinghouse buys bitcoin with the XRP tokens that the company dumps on its retail investors.
Garlinghouse Buying Sats With XRP Tokens
Ripple has been accused of hampering XRP’s price by dumping XRP tokens as part of its monthly escrow unlocks that release 1 billion XRP. The XRP that is not sold is returned back to escrow wallets. Yet, as ZyCrypto reported a few days ago, Brad Garlinghouse told CNN that “Ripple can’t control the price of XRP any more than the whales can control Bitcoin.”.
In a tweet on January 7, 2020, Adam Back claimed that Ripple CEO is buying a bag of bitcoin with pre-mined XRP tokens that the company dumps on retail investors. His exact words were:
“He’s likely pro-BTC though as he’s probably stacking BTC with the pre-mined XRPs dumped on retail.”
Ripple CEO Is Long On Bitcoin
It is no secret that Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is bullish on bitcoin and owns a bitcoin stash. Speaking during the Fortune Brainstorm Finance conference in June last year, Garlinghouse revealed that he doesn’t think there will be a particular cryptocurrency that rules all others in the future and he is indeed long on the flagship cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin maximalists criticize Ripple’s XRP for being too centralized as the firm holds a large chunk of XRP tokens. XRP enthusiasts, on the other hand, believe a cryptocurrency with no leader at its helm is unlikely to succeed. They feel that the cryptocurrency that will emerge as the ultimate winner will be one that is the most adopted by legacy banking systems.
Ripple’s CEO openly admitting that he is bullish on bitcoin was a good thing. It meant that the two cryptocurrencies can comfortably co-exist as they evidently serve different purposes: XRP is a solution for cross-border payments while bitcoin has proved itself as a viable store of value. However, this does not necessarily imply that Garlinghouse uses XRP tokens intended for retail investors to stack bitcoin (BTC).
XRP Is Struggling After Monday’s Monstrous Rally
Ripple’s XRP has corrected downwards and erased almost all the gains it had gained at the start of this week where it skyrocketed by more than 14%. The price of the third-largest cryptocurrency has dropped below the 2600 satoshi zone which had catalyzed the rally. In addition, the XRP-to-BTC exchange rate has nosedived by more than 12% since Monday.
XRP is now trading below the 100-hour moving average (MA) – which is used to predict the direction of the asset’s price in the short-term. This suggests that the short-term outlook for XRP remains bearish. Similar to other cryptocurrencies, XRP is presently facing significant selling pressure as it is down by 4.45 percent on the day. The asset is valued at $0.205859 at press time.
