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On Jan. 26, 2025, the Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse posted a short tweet “slow weekend, anything exciting happened?” The post allegedly aimed to fuel the already heated debate between bitcoinists and XRP fans. The comment section turned into a battlefield.
The “slow weekend” in question ended up being extremely fast in terms of top cryptos losing their value. For instance, XRP lost over 10% in 24 hours (some sources name a 15% drop in one day). That was the worst day since Dec. 18, 2024, when the Fed announced slower tax rate cuts and sent the stock and crypto markets down the drain. Bitcoin saw a nearly 7% drop, too.
We don’t have evidence pointing out that Garlinghouse’s tweet had anything to do with the market crash, no matter how many times Bitcoin maxis are citing the Ripple CEO’s words that without selling XRP, Ripple won’t be profitable or have positive cash flow. However, the infamous quote made a new ripple of mentions in the post-crash discussion.
The reasons behind the downfall
Looking at the Jan. 26 downfall, we can single out at least four reasons for the negative impact. One of them is the harsh tariffs proposed by Donald Trump. Some experts see them as the avenue for inflation growth (the Federal Open Market Committee was among the promoters of this idea). Although that’s not what necessarily will happen, many traders switched to a “cautious” mode.
Another black swan on the market came from China. The release of DeepSeek, a slick Chinese ChatGPT competitor, caused turmoil in the stock and crypto markets after topping the U.S. App Store chart.
Jan. 31, 2025 will see $9.5 billion in Bitcoin and Ethereum options expiry. The market moves unfavourably, prompting traders to fix profits and exit the market, sending the prices even lower.
Finally, one of the main reasons why Bitcoin and other cryptos fell below $800 million is the $800+ million in crypto liquidations in 24 hours.
Inside the XRP vs Bitcoin fans feud
Although the entire market saw no safe spaces during the downfall, of all the leaders it was XRP who lost the most and Bitcoin enthusiasts were quick to voice their criticisms towards XRP again. Why do they hate XRP, and do XRP supporters hate bitcoins back?
XRP has been under fire from decentralization orthodox since its rise to prominence in 2017. Not everyone remembers it now, but at some point, XRP was the second-biggest crypto after Bitcoin, so the two crews have had this rival spirit since then.
What distinguished XRP from the rest of the cryptocurrency projects in the mid-2010s is its focus on leveraging cryptocurrency to serve banks instead of overthrowing them. This state of mind helped Ripple to attract a new audience to cryptocurrency but turned some of the Bitcoin purists away.
XRP has been criticized by the decentralization proponents because the Ripple network uses too few nodes. ”Ripple is centralized” has been a constant attack line of Ripple haters. The focus on corporate clients and aim to facilitate remittance services for banks via crypto were met with distaste from many conservative anti-bank crypto enthusiasts.
Garlinghouse’s 2020 statement concerning the need to sell XRP from time to time to keep Ripple alive is still a red flag for the Bitcoin maxis. They interpret it the following way: Ripple has created the tokens out of thin air, and now they sell it to grab the cash. Those who defend Ripple say that it is called business.
Interestingly enough, Bitcoin has no dev team and saw no pre-sale, so it is free from the rug pull allegations. However, the difference is who holds the most of the supply. In the XRP case, it is the Ripple company. In the Bitcoin case, it is a different company that didn’t create Bitcoin but nevertheless acquired a bunch of coins. What BlackRock and MicroStrategy are doing by accumulating large amounts of Bitcoin can potentially have a negative impact on the market. The BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hays expressed his concerns associated with huge Bitcoin acquisitions by companies like BlackRock as the BTC sold to whales will decrease the Bitcoin liquidity and mining operations, creating the space for CBDCs.
Some XRP fans were attacking bitcoiners in response, posing XRP as a utility currency where Bitcoin is only a dated, slow coin good only for hodling or speculating whenever the green tide kicks in.
Lately, bitcoiners have been angry at XRP for other reasons. As the idea of the Strategic Bitcoin reserve became a prominent part of the government and community’s agenda, the Ripple team started to contact the Trump administration, negotiating sliding some XRP coins into a now multi-currency crypto reserve basket.
The January dinner of the Ripple execs with Trump helped XRP to gain new heights. The rumours of the inclusion of XRP to the national crypto basket reserve began getting more active. All of a sudden, Bitcoin maxis were finding out that Bitcoin is not the only beloved by the U.S. government and started to ring the alarm calling the officials to keep away from the shitcoins and concentrate on Bitcoin instead.
Yet, it is not clear what angles the crypto journey of the new administration will take. Will it be Bitcoin-exclusive or multi-token? Will learn soon.
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