John McAfee, the popular cryptocurrency personality that has been on tabloids countless times for publicly endorsing and promoting digital currencies, and most recently, the founder of the “Ghost” privacy token has just branded XRP “worthless”.
Although that was never the initial subject of his tweet, rather, this was one among his many responses to curious cryptocurrency users who responded to a video he posted to Twitter, which he titled “a Cryptocurrency primer for those who know nothing about it.”
In the 2 mins and 18 seconds long clip, John can be seen urging the general public to educate themselves on Cryptocurrencies. When asked what he thought of the world’s fourth most valued digital currency (XRP) was, McAfee, put out a short and straightforward response saying “worthless.”
John McAfee wants you to use Cryptocurrencies, but “wake up” to the “reality” of Ripple (XRP)
The former “Bitcoin believer” started out by defining cryptocurrencies as a momentary system that users can use to purchase just about anything. McAfee then goes on to highlight one of the benefits of cryptocurrencies against Fiat; “Permissionless and trustless,” he says, referring to the worldwide accessibility of digital wallets as well as cryptocurrency’s decentralized properties, which as opposed to fiat currencies, does not require third parties to validate transactions in swift seconds.
While emphasizing on decentralization, the cryptocurrency advocate goes to say that users do not need to depend on money transfer firms like “MoneyGram.” When a comment pointed to the fact that MoneyGram actually uses Ripple’s XRP, McAfee debunked the claims saying “No. It doesn’t. Wake up.”
However, it should be understood that Ripple is in a partnership with the leading money transfer platform MoneyGram. Back in 2019, Ripple disbursed $30 million to fund MoneyGram’s payment services. Thanks to Ripple’s partnership with the firm, the budding Fintech firm revealed a successful 100% year to year transaction growth in the first quarter of 2020.Ā
With more than 70 countries benefiting from MoneyGram’s peer to peer services, it is clear that Ripple’s million-dollar investment to the platform which seals its $50 million offering to grant Ripple a 10% stake for MoneyGram to test run Ripple’s (XRP) performance, has greatly paid off for the company.
Although McAfee didn’t address MoneyGram and Ripple any further than the responses noted above, his remarks about Ripple echoes the thoughts of many Ripple critics who stand by a collective belief that the Blockchain giant is centralized. Over the years, Ripple has been criticized for owning a huge share of its native coin, along with its co-founder Jed McCaleb reportedly selling $1 billion XRP while still controlling an estimated 5% of XRP’s supply.
Meanwhile, Ripple’s SVP of customer success Marcus Treacher addressed the comments, part of which reads;
“Itās a decentralized, open-source digital asset, and the XRP Ledger is based on an inherently decentralized, democratic, consensus mechanism ā meaning no one party can control it, not even Ripple. Ripple is a stakeholder of XRP thus is an interested party in its success,ā Treacher continued. Therefore, in his view, āit wouldnāt be logical as a business to disrupt the XRP Ledger or XRP.ā
John McAfee Endorses Privacy Coins Over Bitcoin
John McAfee did not forget to mention that users educate themselves on privacy coins as well. Having released his own privacy coin known as “Ghost coin”, McAfee urged users to seek out privacy coins like Ghost and Monero.
He suggested this when one comment hinted on the speculations that Bitcoin’s encryption could be cracked by a super-computer. Although he didn’t say how, he responded in affirmation saying “BTC is easy to crack.”
