Everyone in crypto has heard of the XRP Army, the vocal collection of die-hard XRP fans who defend and promote their token with a zeal rarely seen in other projects. Many of them predict that the only barrier to massive adoption and huge price increases is time, and that one day the token will make them millionaires. Lots of statistics are floated by the XRP Army as to the token’s potential price and future market cap, with price predictions ranging from $10 to $10,000, but where do they get their predictions from, and why do they believe what they believe? A delve into some XRP forums offers some interesting insights into the mindset of these hardcore fans.
Adoption!
Adoption, adoption, adoption – this is the mantra drummed home by every member of the XRP Army. Banks, governments, your elderly relatives…everyone will be using XRP to transfer money in the future. This is perhaps the biggest factor repeated by the XRP Army as to why they token price will moon, but it’s not one that stands up to scrutiny right now. Despite working with some established names like Santander, competition in the micro-payment sector is likely to be fierce as the technology develops. JPMorgan’s Interbank Information Network (IIN) has 350 member banks, with adoption of their JPM coin also likely within the network, and Ripple will find it extremely hard to break into this inner circle of the world’s biggest banks. Once the big boys pick a side, they won’t be turning back, meaning that the next 2-3 years will be crucial for Ripple. The company has seemed to realize that they have placed too many eggs in one basket and has therefore recently diversified into various financial products, but success here won’t mask the failure to capture the contracts that would give it a seat at the top table. Nevertheless, the mass adoption trope is the most widely used reason for a future astronomical token price by the XRP Army.
Written in the Charts
Technical analysis (TA) continues to divide the community, with many suggesting that charts can be interpreted to fit theories rather than the other way around. This is particularly the case with XRP, where the drive to back up faith with evidence abounds:
Charts like the above are willfully ignorant of crucial factors in determining an asset’s potential future price, yet many within the XRP camp don’t have the knowledge to counter the flaws in this ‘analysis’ – they just believe it and repeat it. Equally damaging are the assumptions that a bull market will take care of the price all by itself:
When $XRP ? it won’t stop at all time high. History shows repetitive bull markets exceed ATH by 6 to 10 times the mark. That puts the value between $22-$40. I don’t know where you #predictionists are getting this $10-$12 crap. #xrpthestandard
— @XRPillionaire (@xrpillionaire) October 16, 2019
Much of the faith in the XRP price action depends on history repeating exactly as it has done before, which is a very dangerous game to play. Naturally the more realistic price targets are drowned out by those of the moon boys, resulting in a kind of echo chamber than simply repeats and heightens the already fantastical price targets and makes up reasons based on shoddy TA or what the entire crypto market cap “could be” in five years’ time.
In Ripple We Trust
One interesting thing to note is the difference in attitudes between XRP fans and fans of other large projects. Scroll through any XRP group and you will come across a huge amount of “XRP will be adopted by banks”, “when we are all using XRP”, or “when the price hits $100”. This is vastly different from many other groups where the price predictions are a little more tentative, with “could” often replacing “will”, reflecting a more cautious attitude. This small difference speaks volumes, as it suggests that the XRP army are utterly convinced of the future and there is no way they will consider being wrong, rather like a religion or a cult – they are right, and they are sure of it. Evidence that contradicts their beliefs is instantly dismissed for various reasons, such as a lack of understanding in the function of the token or an underappreciation of its potential utility.
A good example of this is the market cap argument. For XRP to have a price of $100, the market cap (going by the lower figure of circulating supply over total supply) would be $1.254 trillion. To give some context, Amazon’s current market cap is $869.36 billion, but the XRP Army has a range of arguments ready as to why XRP can have a market cap this size. These include the crypto markets in general reaching a multi trillion-dollar market cap, thus propelling XRP with it; quantum computing destroying the competition, and the divisible nature of XRP meaning that it is “designed for $10,000”. These creative arguments, among others, illustrate the lengths some XRP fans will go to in order to back up their case and decry the naysayers.
So why do the XRP Army believe in their coin so strongly? Firstly, the link with banks is crucial, as this encourages the belief that massive adoption and therefore large-scale usage is on the doorstep, despite the increasing evidence to the contrary. Continually dangling the carrot of adoption is crucial to keep the faith alive and bubbling. Then you throw in a bull run where the price jumped a staggering 56,566% in 2017 and you embed the notion that this coin is a millionaire maker that could reach $100, $1,000 or even $10,000. This recipe is then perfect to hook in newcomers to the space who are reeled in by the supposed potential (and the low price) of the token, and who don’t know enough about crypto to spot red flags; they fall for the Twitter hype, throw in their life savings and tell everyone that XRP can reach the moon. This kind of blind faith only gets you so far, and under normal circumstances if a project’s fundamentals didn’t deliver then that faith would start to erode. The XRP Army is built of different stuff however, and as long as there is the faintest glimmer of adoption they will continue to post dodgy charts and three-figure predictions, much to the derision of the rest of the crypto community. And that’s why, deep down, we all love them.
Everyone Will Use $XRP ??? pic.twitter.com/jx1ABwIFNb
— Han Solo ??? (@OneHanSolo) October 14, 2019
