Ripple’s XRP Gets Blasted by CFA: “Completely Retarded” – Here’s the Tea

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Eric Yakes, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and author of The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution, has unleashed a scathing critique of Ripple and its associated XRP token. Yakes, who also co-founded and serves as Managing Partner at Epoch in the Bitcoin venture capital sector, expressed his disapproval in unusually stark language on February 10.

Yakes Slams Ripple and XRP

Yakes opened his post with a broadside against the fundamental nature of Ripple and its token, declaring, “Ripple is precisely the problem bitcoin was created to solve: printing fake money for political gain.” He further asserted that, from his perspective, the entire enterprise lacked a legitimate use case, calling it “completely retarded,” and claiming he was compelled to “waste an hour” researching Ripple ahead of a speaking engagement at a traditional finance (TradFi) conference.

Yakes itemized his reasoning in detail. He described the remittance and central bank digital currency (CBDC) objectives often associated with Ripple as inadequate, since, in his words, “nobody wants to use a volatile, centralized, and illiquid bridge currency (XRP)” when more appropriate options for remittances—such as stablecoins or Bitcoin—already exist.

He also stated, “The only use case is to trick retail investors into pumping the token price,” which he believes is orchestrated through marketing partnerships with banks, combined with political lobbying. He further suggested that the XRP token supply lacks true scarcity, contending that the ledger could be forked at will and that the foundation sells XRP to finance political agendas. Yakes maintained that these are precisely the types of issues Bitcoin’s decentralized design was meant to counter, remarking, “The entire problem Bitcoin was created to solve.”

His analysis went on to challenge RippleNet’s reported volume figures, branding them as small relative to other digital assets. He referenced RippleNet’s self-reported total settlement volume of $30 billion since inception and compared it to the daily turnover of Tether ($50 billion) and Bitcoin ($40 billion), concluding that Ripple’s claim of large-scale adoption was “a deceptive game of smoke and mirrors.” He added that banks want the publicity of a “press release” rather than actual usage of XRP, because he believes XRP itself does not address a real need in global remittances. He also described Ripple’s network as centralized, pointing out that what he says was a recent unilateral shutdown indicates a lack of proper decentralized consensus.

According to him, a primary node operator intervened without broader coordination, and the limited number of validators cannot realistically secure the network because they lack any financial incentive to run nodes. Yakes underscored his political argument by pointing out what he views as Ripple’s dissonance with certain US government positions, stating that “Its primary goal is to be a CBDC platform – drastically opposed to the Trump administration’s executive order banning CBDCs.”

In closing his post, Yakes wrote, “If you want this corrupt group to achieve political favor to make their shitcoin worth something, you need to go find a higher purpose in life,” leaving little doubt about his personal stance on both Ripple and its XRP token. Ripple executives have not yet offered a formal rebuttal.

XRP Community Reacts

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2025-02-11 17:43