Why the haters hate XRP

Feb 23, 2018

Seems every day you'll see someone yelling, "XRP is a scam/shit/banker's coin!!"

From where I sit, anybody that is still hating on XRP is doing it for one or more of the following flawed reasons:

They believe XRP really is somehow controlled or owned by banks, despite endless literature and open source code proving otherwise. Really, this just proves they are illiterate.
They don't know the difference between Ripple the company and XRP the coin
They don't understand that XRP can operate in precisely all the exact same use cases they advocate Bitcoin for, but 1000 times faster and 1000 times cheaper
They believe XRP isn't a legitimate blockchain crypto, despite that the XRP ledger IS a fully stand-alone, cryptographically-secured, interdependent chain of blocks. The difference being that nodes are not required to keep all the blockchain history because they only need to know the current state of the balances
They believe that the first 32750 XRP ledger "blocks" are missing but that's not true. Ripple reset the genesis block to this number to compensate for lost headers that describe the first day and a half of the ledger's online presence, when virtually nobody was even using it or could be affected by it. Those earlier transactions themselves are still preserved however, and no XRP is lost or hidden behind this. It was the result of a software bug, but they were the entire XRP validator network at the time and so they had majority vote and there was most likely no collateral damage. And even though they currently still have the majority vote (EDIT: no longer true, Ripple is now a minority validator), even STILL they could never do that today without the endorsement of all the companies hosting trusted nodes, and unavoidable public scrutiny. Reconstruction efforts have failed, but are of little consequence as these lost headers are completely irrelevant to the state of the ledger today.
They believe that being able to mine a coin is the only requirement to qualify as a legitimate crypto coin, despite that both Bitcoin and Ethereum (effectively) will also no longer be mine-able in the future as they reach their max coins
They believe that XRP being entirely pre-mined disqualifies it as a legitimate coin, despite that both Bitcoin and Ethereum were both heavily pre-mined
They believe that its trusted-validator distributed consensus architecture disqualifies XRP as a blockchain, even though the only blockchain aspects of any coin are merely the ledger blocks and interconnections that form the chain. The consensus mechanism that surrounds a blockchain is only for deciding what goes into a blockchain, and isn't part of the blockchain itself. It's like saying a car's engine is no longer an engine if you put it into a different car.
They hypocritically believe a whole nother Lightning Network layer on top of Bitcoin will adequately scale Bitcoin and make it just as appealing to the very banks they don't want to use it
They made a poorly-timed investment in XRP and lost a bunch of money and are now bitter
They just want you to buy their chosen shitcoins instead so they can make money off of you
They are in a position of influence and are manipulating the market for their own gains, or were paid by competing coin major holders to denigrate XRP while pumping the other coin (aka, paid shills)
They feel XRP is peaking and have shifted their funds to another coin and are now trying to prick the XRP bubble so they can buy back in at a lower price.
They believe the only function of a bank is bank accounts, so digital wallets should completely replace banks, right?
They believe that if the masses all adopted an anonymous blockchain like Bitcoin, all the world's woes would be solved
They believe everyone in the world is smart enough to utilize Bitcoin or other crypto
They believe everyone in the world has a smart phone
They believe that the mathematical blockchain concept is somehow 'owned' by puritanical anarchist philosophy
They believe they'd last more than 10 minutes if the world broke down into their desired anarchy
They have Asperger Syndrome (seriously)
They have a considerable investment in mining hardware
They are teenagers that are too young to get onto an exchange to trade their mined Bitcoins/Ether into XRP
They were dropped as a baby (not seriously) (probably not even funny)

And most likely quite a few other reasons, but they all fall under one category: it's all self-serving, malicious bullshit; save for one salient point that I happen to agree with: banks are evil. So go ahead Bitcoin fanboys, sharpen your teeth, get your bags of hate out, prepare to launch. But before you do, let me just say that you don't hate banks anywhere near as much as I do, I can promise you that.

At some point in the not-so-recent history, banks have slipped away from being a utility. They have become these monstrous slavery machines that trap you into indentured servitude with mortgages, loans, credit cards, etc., and a pathetic line-up of very low yield savings accounts, mutual funds, and other rigged instruments; all of it designed to trick your compulsive instincts (under the guise of free-will) into steering your hard-earned income directly back into the bank it came out of, sending you back to the metaphorical coal mines to earn more of it. As much as Buffet would say the stock market moves money from the impatient to the patient, likewise banks move money from the working class to the 1%.

Obscured behind every bank is a small group of very powerful rich psychopaths that have inherited their self-designated rightful positions at the helm of the economic engine, and their history and legacy is mottled with frequent, strategic, and profound influence upon lawmakers to carve out exceptions for the banks that would otherwise be seen as outright criminal activity by any sensible person.

Some examples would be

Risk obfuscation (Collateralized Debt Obligations. Mortgage Backed Securities. Asset Backed Securities. Tranches.)
The existence of swaps, which are no more than PROFOUNDLY inadequate placebo insurance-esque policies (meant to cover the banks for missed payments from borrowers), but sidesteps insurance-related protectionist regulations because they called them swaps, not insurance.
The 'sludge' fund. I'm sure most of you have had a curious 'service fee' charge show up once or twice, which was resolved immediately once you spoke with a bank representative; but what about those millions of people that didn't speak up?
"No doc" loan originations, high-interest credit card advances, balloon loans, etc.; exploiting the uneducated
Absurd lack of accuracy and frequent mistakes in your credit report that cost you lots of money to correct and in lost credit-related opportunities, with zero culpability to the banks for said fallout.
Constant automated blocking of your credit card due to overzealous fraud-detection algorithms that steal only your time (not theirs) to try to restore

and my absolute favorite:

Fractional reserves, which means they can legally lend out much more money than they actually have, yes really. It's also called cooking-the-books if WE do it and we'd go to JAIL. Sure reserve lending may give us much lower borrowing rates in times of stability, but rapidly casts us into economic collapse if destabilized even a little bit, causing reckless federal money-printing in order to compensate and subsequent rampant inflation that continuously reduces the buying power of whatever money you have. But when has this ever happened..

Of course, there are countless other examples, but even if you don't understand all of this, you just 'know' intuitively there's a lot of underhanded shit going on and we are currently powerless to escape it.

Most people are not exposed to the full depth and breadth of what a bank consists of, but everyone 'feels' something is amiss, even if only at a primordial level. It just doesn't seem natural that we should have to wake up early, drive in rush hour, sit at a desk or do manual labor for 8-10 hours, then drive back home exhausted, watch advertising-laden television for 3 hours while our bodies harden with atherosclerosis before going back to bed. Wash rinse repeat for nearly 50 years. All this to pay for a box to live in, and 2 out of seven days to try to feel alive.

Most don't see how the multi-layered economic architecture of the banking systems are directly responsible for this, but they are the ultimate bodies that control the servitude balancing mechanism that relates the cost of living to how hard people are willing to work for it. Make it too hard, and people revolt, make it too easy, people don't work as hard as they could. The cost of living has to be juussst right, enough to make working hard every day not quite as bad as organizing a revolution.

It's these fat investor bastards behind the banks that are skimming off the top of your daily efforts to line their pockets. You don't even have a choice. Most of us are born poor enough that even just to eat we have to work tons of hours, and there's not much left over after we pay ours or another person's mortgage; bank gets paid either way. There's only a pittance left over to allow us some modest indulgences. With rare exceptions, most of us will never put together a million dollars; life's too expensive. We are trapped in slavery hell.

Nothing would make me happier than to not need a bank for any facet of my life. In my vision of the future, we should be able to get paid, pay our bills, and keep our money safe without the need for a bank. We should be able to crowd-source a loan, we should be able to transfer money around the world person-to-person without using a middleman, we should be able to buy anything anywhere without a bank being involved, ever. Augh! Bankers, get your criminal greedy paws off my fucking money already!!

At this point, XRP haters would say, well duh, so why would you support Ripple and XRP then??

Long game. Think people, the long game. Everything that you've ever heard about XRP in banks, other FIs, Remittances, etc.. all fit in a 10 year window. What you don't hear much about, is what happens after.

I'll get to that, but first, let's stop with all the wildly-gesticulated blind hate-thrashing and really pinpoint what the hate here is all about: poverty, or at least the belief that you have endured hardship at the hands of the greedy rich hiding behind the labyrinth framework of banks and governments. There's no disputing that evil banking/government cartels rule this Earth and stomp on us daily to take whatever is left of our life-juice. There is nothing natural about both partners working 40+ hours a week, plus incidentals, but still just getting by. Somewhere along the line, we allowed ourselves to become enslaved; all of us.

A stupid person constantly reiterates the mindless mantra of XRP being a "banker's coin". It's stupid because it's baseless hyperbole that's ignorant of the facts, but let's face it, stupid is easy and can't be fixed unless you really want to fix it. So, if you're one of these Tyrannosaurus idiots, what you're meddlesome ego is blocking your brain from learning is that XRP is a ledger coin that has no purpose other than a store of value, no different than Bitcoin's function. Sure, Ripple, the company, is the steward for XRP, the coin, but the XRP ledger is open-source and out in the wild, just like Bitcoin, and would survive even if Ripple the company disappears, like Bitcoin survives with no steward. In other words, FORGET about Ripple, I want you to focus on what I'm saying about XRP alone.

XRP can be used in every single way that Bitcoin can, even without any contribution from Ripple, Inc.: it can be a store of value, you can create an anonymous wallet, and despite the bullshit misinformation campaign, nobody can freeze your XRP if it's in your own wallet; only NON-XRP balances can be frozen, and that is a FACT. Truth is, there is no philosophical potential difference between XRP and Bitcoin at all, there's only the historically-established momentum of affiliation that distinguishes them.

What cryptoanarchists are really trying to say (but failing stuptacularly), is that they hate Ripple, the COMPANY, and what Ripple represents in terms of strengthening the position of banks. Hating on XRP, the COIN, is like hating a hammer for crushing your pet spider; it's not the hammer's fault! So can we all at least focus on hating banks and not innocent little XRP?

No? Is it because XRP is baked into Ripple's products? How does that reduce its Bitcoin-like function in the context of 'you'? You don't need Ripple's products to use XRP. Is it because Ripple is becoming super rich? Well, you're probably reading this on a computer (Dell? Android?), etc. Does it bother you that these companies are also super rich? You don't seem to mind using their tools though..

You probably also use money every day, how does that not help the banks? Shouldn't you not be using money if you were in any way sincere in bringing banks down? I'd say your best opportunity to end the tyranny of banks isn't by just using Bitcoin, it'd be not using money at all right?? So why are you still using money? Why just pick on XRP?

And why are you XRP-hating/anarchy-loving fanboys even in crypto in the first place? To save humanity from itself?? Bullshit, you're a greedy lambo-seeking prick just like everyone else, so please stop the hypocritical rhetoric. When you scream "Ripple is a banker's coin", you're really saying, "Come buy up the shit coins I'm invested in so I can take someone else's money like mine was taken from me". You, sir, are in no position to promote piety to humankind {pedestal collapses}.

It doesn't matter if you're a newbie investor, a technicals-fundamentalist, or a dufus crypto-anarchist, we all want the same thing regardless of which coins we invest in. We all want freedom and equitable existence, whether we know how to pursue it or not. Bitcoin was the first mechanism that showed us the potential of blockchain technology to liberate us from this seemingly inescapable reliance upon and debt imprisonment to banks, and the consequential indentured servitude we call 'employment' that allows us to feed the banks.

We all want to be free; but in the current system, we are forced to make bad choices because of a limited set of options. We sign that never-ending mortgage contract, we get car loans, we use credit cards; step by step plugging ourselves into the banker's Borg train. We don't have an alternative option yet. Or do we?..

What is the libertarian dream of Bitcoin exactly? Briefly, it's to bring ubiquity of value to everyone without a middleman (banks). Bitcoin fails this objective, period. Not even worth discussing because we all already know the aging Bitcoin apparatus is creaking and groaning, becoming more centralized by the day as hosting a node becomes ever-more beyond average users, ready to blow apart, too expensive for the lower class to even use; and 17 more forked Bitcoin siblings isn't going to bring us any closer to that dream.

Lightning Network is going to save Bitcoin, you say? Oh yes, so now you suddenly have no problem "trusting" the stability/liquidity/morphology/discretion of a Lightning Network "distributed" node model?? (even though you love Bitcoin because it's decentralized, irony perhaps??). Doesn't that seem to be bringing Bitcoin closer to the distributed validator model that XRP natively uses??...hmmmm.

And don't think LN is just Bitcoin on steroids, it's considerably more complicated, requiring pre-funding, established relationships, etc. It's not your grandfather's bitcoin; you won't be sending money to just anybody instantly without a whole pile of setting that up first. Don't hold your breath though, there's excruciating and confusing Bitcoin upgrades still required before the complex multiple variations of LN (yes really) can even work together, much less be trustless, even though it forever will be a validator-esque architecture.

Also, did you know that LN is coin-agnostic? You can even use LN as a heterogeneous mesh to pay between coins. You can literally overlay LN on top of any coin that supports at least primitive contract functionality, yes even XRP, if that were remotely necessary. That's right, LN is not married to Bitcoin. And let's not overlook the fact that LN nodes are as physically exposed to government annihilation as you might claim XRP validators are. So much for your beloved Bitcoin decentralization. Tada! Shaddap.

XRP is already NATIVELY as fast and can be scaled to much faster than the LN is trying to be. Saying XRP will be defeated by LN, is like trading a Porsche for a horse with a rocket on its back.

So if Bitcoin alone obviously and demonstrably can't end the tyranny of the rich banks, how do we accomplish the ideal of becoming bankless? I will tell you.. We need to infect the economy with a "viral-coin" that the banks find irresistible (meaning makes them money), but that also has the qualities of our independence built in. Banks won't even be able to stop themselves from being infected because competition will force their hand, even if they clearly see the viral nature of it. Let's turn the greed of the banks against themselves with our trojan horse. And that's what XRP truly is, it's money that banks can and want to use, and even will have no choice but to use, yet allows us to store our own money, and doesn't necessarily have to reveal its owner (explained further down).

By making a coin that appeals to banks (meaning it can be regulated and taxed), it will skirt government resistance and infect the entire economic ecosystem. Complete host invasion. The stage is now set for a massive bank customer exodus. Why? Because at that point they'll no longer be needed by the average person! I can keep all my money in my own possession!

And thanks to the expected deep economic integration of XRP, I can spend my coins at any retail outlet, I can probably get my salary direct to my wallet, and if I want to send money instantly to my aunt climbing Vinson Massif, it won't cost me 2 body parts. A whole new first-world experience of the possibility of being 'unbanked' for the first time in modern history! That my friends is where we'd like to be.

It doesn't matter 'how' we get there, we just 'need' to get there; we don't even need to fully destroy the banks (good luck with that), we just need the option not to use them. I'm not so delusional to think the banks and governments are going away, but I do think we can reach a stage where being unbanked is an option, and that's really what we're all after; freedom of choice. As is usual, somewhere in the middle between anarchy and slavery, lies the solution all sides can live with.

Who cares if Ripple gets rich in the process? Who cares if the banks makes assloads of money in the short-term? Their adoption of any cryptocurrency (even if it's not forever XRP, better tech is always on the horizon) is what's going to eventually give us that 'choice' to become bankless that we would not otherwise have. As much as Bitcoin had echoes of this promise, its failed execution will never get us there because the banks won't touch it.

But Bitcoins are anonymous! Surely part of the equation to freedom is protection from the prying eyes of the government and banks?

Don't believe me that XRP can also be anonymous? You don't have to; prove it to yourself. Right now, you can download toast wallet, create an XRP address with no signup information, and have anybody on Earth send you XRP, and then you can send that XRP to anybody else. No banks involved whatsoever, and no government would have any idea it was you any more than if we did this same thing with Bitcoin; get it?

If you never mix your anonymous XRP wallet activities with your traceable XRP wallet activities (including not transferring between these wallets), then nobody will ever ever know about your anonymous XRP. Yes, this is currently possible. The risks of your XRP being identified as yours closely parallel the methods used to trace fiat cash, and XRP has PRECISELY the same risk as your Bitcoins being identified, so administer your funds appropriately.

XRP has ALL of the very same SEEDS of the breakdown of the bank hegemony that Bitcoin has, PLUS, XRP has the additional quality of ALSO being regulatory friendly so that the banks can and probably will use it for their own profit-objectives. XRP is money, not a philosophy, not a company, not a bank, and not inherently evil. XRP can be money a banker uses, and it can also be money a drug-dealer uses; just like...well, MONEY. You can use it as a banker's coin, and you can also use it as an underground coin; both uses apply equally.

Let me summarize:

If we convince the banks to use XRP, then lo and behold, a Mt. Everest-sized pile of cash will fall right into this ecosystem, ready for you to anonymously benefit from. This means it will make you money like Bitcoin does; check.
XRP is already 'lightning' fast natively making it very simple to work with, Bitcoin is natively very slow; check.
XRP will never fork; you funds are perpetually valid. Bitcoin forks force you to manually keep abreast of and transfer to whichever fork is the winning one in order to optimally retain your value; check
XRP transfers are impossibly cheap, Bitcoin expensive; check
XRP is environmentally friendly, Bitcoin ravages Mother Nature; check
XRP is deflationary, just like Bitcoin (can't create more coins beyond the maximum) check

What is it about Bitcoin that people believe that it, and only it, can accomplish the demise of banks? A few things: anonymity (which XRP can also accomplish), safe personal storage of value that doesn't require a bank (which XRP can also accomplish), appreciation of value (which XRP clearly demonstrates)... So I have to ask WHY the fuck anybody would vehemently defend a deprecated technology, and at the same time FIGHT the best tool out there to defeat the banks at their own game??

Sure, for the first decade, banks and Ripple and taxation will profit, but as more and more consumers become skilled enough to use private wallets to safely store all their wealth, and the subsequent need for banks dwindles as their reserves are taken out by customers and converted to their private holdings of XRP, doesn't this accomplish the anarchist wet dream of escaping the banks??

Don't think for a second the banks don't already FULLY comprehend this future reality. This is the number one reason they won't adopt yet (regulations my ass, when did that ever stop them?), and it's why they are badmouthing crypto, or trying to create their own literal "bankers" coins that nobody will ever use. They see the wave of the unbanked coming like a wrecking ball, and all they can do is try to slow down the inevitable as much as possible. Attrition will beat them down though, and they will be forced to adapt as the whole world around them takes away their precious "control" over us, one XRP at a time.

Hate is blind. The cure for what ails humanity lies right in front of your eyes. It's not going to be a decentralized angel of mercy that kills all banks with one massive swipe of a sword as your ADD-inducing MMORPG alternate-life would suggest, no, it's a slow and meticulous cancer that metastasizes banks from within, and you can help spread that cancer by recognizing that XRP can and will be EXACTLY what Bitcoin wanted to be and what you've always wanted... the alternative to banks.

Comments and particularly supporting links welcome on Twitter