Leigh Drogen, the General Partner and CIO of Starkiller Capital — a quantitative asset manager in the digital asset space — has thrown shade at two of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market value. Drogen torched Cardano’s ADA and Ripple’s XRP as “completely utterly useless” tokens.
Drogen forecasted that their multi-billion-dollar market shares would flow to other crypto assets in the ecosystem that “actually work and matter” in the coming market cycle.
Cardano is a proof-of-stake blockchain launched in 2015 by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson. Cardano recently underwent the “Valentine” upgrade, including new features to improve cross-chain functionality and security for DApps built on the chain. With a market cap of $14 billion, ADA holds the seventh spot on the crypto market rankings.
Meanwhile, XRP is a cross-border payments token associated with Ripple; the company embroiled in a two-year legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That case alleges that Ripple raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered securities offering of the sixth-largest cryptocurrency; Ripple vehemently denies that XRP is a security.
According to CoinGecko, XRP is down by 88.52% from its January 2018 lifetime high as of press time, while ADA is down from its ATH by 87%.
So Much Hate For XRP And Cardano
Drogen’s remarks reflect numerous other statements made over the years by different observers. Financial journalist Max Keiser, for instance, labelled Cardano’s ADA as “centralized garbage” back in March 2021.
Legendary trader Peter Brandt then called XRP “garbage” in July 2022. Most recently, in December, self-proclaimed bitcoin creator Craig Wright deemed XRP “the most useless pump and dump scheme in this entire industry.”
Notably, both XRP and ADA have a passionate group of followers, with some crypto insiders describing them as a “weird cult”. Yet despite their popularity among crypto investors, Leigh Drogen is still convinced that they are massively overvalued and on track to shave off their market shares.
