Take a peek under the hood of any reddit post regarding Ripple (XRP), and you'll notice a common theme in the comment section: it quickly devolves into a steaming 6-coiler of vitriol, flushed down the anti-Centralized Currency shit pipe which feeds the Ripple Hatred Fatberg lurking below.
As a relatively new Crypto investor, it really makes no sense to me. It seems as though it's easy for this community to don the mantles of Early Adopter, Entrepreneur, and Visionary in a space where you can put money into just about anything and feel like PreCog with a money press, but everyone seems to lose the plot when the Barbarians at the Gate come knocking.
What I see is people complaining about the popularity of a "centralized token" making a mockery of what CryptoCurrency is "supposed to be" - the breaking free from the control and manipulation of fiat currency - while espousing the merits of a highly volatile and heavily corrupted economic ecosystem where:
- Pump & Dump groups are heavily manipulating the small cap coin markets
- Whales are heavily manipulating the large cap coin markets
- An alarming number coins and ICO's are complete scams
- Heavy shilling warps nearly everyone's sense of reality, perspective and value
- Coinbase and the exchanges have us all fitted with rubber ball gags and zipper masks while they line us up and take turns assblasting us for fees
- The influencers and "Thought Leaders" within the community all basically make the same shitty, rambling 20 minute "news" and/or "prediction" vlogs whilst staring at CoinMarketCap, and participating in a bullshit, clickbait, CAPSLOCK YouTube title arms race (because clicks and views are more important than actually educating the masses or shaping the Crypto landscape)
- And the most tragic part: the best, most promising, legitimate game-changing projects can often languish at the expense of the "First Movers", Vaporware, and Flavor of the Month shitcoins with clever marketing ploys and an army of
opportunisticparasitic de facto fuckboy social media trolls
It just blows my mind that people have the nerve to wax poetic about the vision of a man that may or may not exist in an effort to deride XRP, and by virtue of omission, basically infer that he'd be completely fine with all of the above? I'm going to have to raise the bullshit flag on this one.
And if I were to peel back the onion a little further, a little deeper, and take it to a place that's a little darker, I'd go so far as to say that the Ripple hatred actually reveals a more sinister motivation within the general CryptoCurrency community: Why would people who claim to hate a centralized and manipulated currency, which serves as a mean to control the population (fiat), embrace a system which is far more heavily manipulated, and has far more strength to control (via price influence), is mostly centralized into the hands of a few, and is mostly traded by bots?
One could speculate (if one were so inclined), that the movement to CryptoCurrency isn't motivated purely by an idealogical difference between the individual and the banks, institutions or government, and isn't a form of protest against the aforementioned, but is in fact, a way to secure their place at the top of the food chain when the Crypto revolution finally takes hold because, "it's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."
And therein lies the hypocrisy.
It's also really hard for me to tell if the Crypto-Purists are trolling, deluded or naive enough to think that CryptoCurrency was going to become some last bastion of economic freedom where the denizens of earth would be allowed to go about their business unburdened and unmolested by The Powers That Be.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't believe the Lizard People, AI, nor Aliens created CryptoCurrency, but I DO believe that too many powerful people have too much money invested in the current system to just let us rapscallions create our own breakaway currency civilization.
There is nothing pure in this world. Everything gets the Fel touch of power and greed, and Crypto is no different, especially given the size, scale, potential, and profitability.
The reality is that Ripple is here to stay and no amount of snide, condescending, shitty remarks on reddit is going to change that fact (believe me you've all been giving it your best), and I think its important for everyone to understand that. And once we understand it, we can learn to manage it - and even take advantage of it.
- Ripple being adopted by the big banks has the potential to expedite the legitimacy and adoption of other Crypto uses in the marketplace
- The popularity of Ripple is bringing new investors into the market, which now have the opportunity to learn about what the vision of what "CryptoCurrency" is "supposed to be", but us being spiteful fuckbags probably isn't going to win the hearts and minds of the uninitiated
- New investors also means new money, more demand and less supply, leading to higher prices of more coins (assuming new investors are not SOLELY investing in Ripple), which means you're probably benefiting from "The Ripple Effect" whether you like it or not
- Buy XRP Low, Sell High, and invest those profits into increasing your position in projects you DO support! Claiming you're not going invest in XRP because you
're a petulant child"don't support it" is hurting your mission and the mission of the coins you support
Lashing out against it, or pretending it doesn't exist is hurting us more than learning to manage the effect it has on our CryptoBiome, so I think we all need to grow up and confront it like the Early Adopters, Entrepreneurs, and Visionaries we pretend to be.