Frankenmath
Nov 26, 2018
Saw the weather report today. Says it should be in the 40s tonight. Good, love a nice chill. Did some grocery shopping. Bought 6 oranges. That means 6 * 40 = 240 orange chills tonight. Can you believe that? Oh wait, no I need Celsius, so that's only 4.4 degrees * 6 oranges = about 26, but tomorrow it's supposed to be just as cold, so that's 52..
Shoot me in the face.
This is precisely the batshit insane Frankenmath I see all over the place in the cryptosphere, making associations of shit to shovels and running wild with the results. Here's the kicker though, everyone already seems to recognize that "Market Cap" is a fictional number because the number of circulating coins multiplied by the last trade price MEANS???...NOTHING! Nothing at all. Great! That was easy.
The Market Cap calculation is my favorite and the absolute perfect example of the old "VIRGIN MATH" calculation (I made that up), which is when people try to ram together some COMPLETELY UNRELATED numbers, and attempt to make sense out of the results. Virgin Math calculations are the source of every false hype pump, as I'll demonstrate below.
For example, you'll often see people take the total of all the annual cross-border payments (Lots), divide it by the total number of XRP (100b), and tada, you have a can of horseshit! This is not math, it's literally crap! What this calculation ACTUALLY calculates is if somehow some way, it were possible in one transaction to purchase ALL THE XRP IN THE WORLD AT THE SAME TIME using the sum TOTAL of ALL the money meant for the cross-border transfers annually, AND LEFT IT IN XRP! This is the only way this calculation has any meaning, and there just will never be a scenario where all cross-border money transferred in a year will ALL be in ALL of the XRP at any single point in time! Absolutely ridiculous, and meaningless. And it's easy to prove it's meaningless because if you just look at the same calculation but with six months of payments instead of annual, now XRP is half the price?? Which is it? Are you saying now that it will double during the second half of the year even though the rate of transfers doesn't change? Gibberish.
The other Virgin Math variation is to take all the $23 trillion (27 is more accurate but stay with me) locked up in global nostro/vostro, and divide that by 39 billion circulating coins (40+ billion now but stay with me), and you end up with $589 per coin!! Tada! I'm literally fucking blinded by the blast of insanity coming off this number. What the fuck is that?? Are the banks going to take all that money out of nostro/vostro and lock it right back up into ALL CIRCULATING XRP to hold?? Because that's the only way it's getting to $589 from nostro/vostro money. Of course not, they're going to invest their newly-liberated money in bank-type investments, like lending, or expanding, etc. There's ZERO motivation for them to trade ALL of that money into XRP.
If it's so goddam obvious that Market Cap is a meaningless number, then why are the other Virgin Math calculations allowed to proliferate? I'll tell you why, because Market Cap stands in the way of hopium addicts' wet dreams of a giant syringe full of the promised land, so they're quick to dismiss Market Cap, but yet these other Virgin Math examples actually seem to 'help' them get their hopium junk, so they MUST be true! Facts? Pshaw, who needs 'em. Math? Logic? Only when it suits them. They'd rather just talk out their brainus.
Ok, now that I've kinda laid out some profoundly insulting groundwork, I'm going to review some very basic key concepts that's going to help me help YOU see for YOURSELF why the latest and greatest INSTANT PRICE JUMP hysterical nonsense is just more Virgin Math.
The DNA of a Trade
At its simplest, an exchange does nothing more than offer a place where 'trades' can occur. E.g., You want to buy XRP with cash, another person wants to sell XRP for cash. The exchange connects you and brokers the trade. Done! Simple! Not so fast, let's open that up a bit.
Every trade starts with an initial 'Order'. For simplicity's sake, let's just say there's nobody else on the exchange but you and the other guy. He places an order to sell his XRP for a set price. You haven't placed your order yet, so there's nobody to buy his XRP, and thus, his Order remains on the Order book unfulfilled, sitting on the SELL side. Now you decide to also create an Order. You see this other guy's order and feel it's a fair price, so you create your order to match his terms, and then the exchange determines you two are a match and the trade is made, assets are swapped, and Orders are closed. Boom
So, there's (at least) two orders involved in every trade, the buyer's order and the seller's order, and they have to match or no trade is made. So what would've happened if you thought, "Hmm, I'm going to try squeezing a few more XRP out of this guy, so I'll make my order a little less generous than what he's asking". Well, since the exchange was unable to find a matching order for you, you TOO are now placed on the order book, but on the BUY side. So there you two sit, facing each other, waiting for the other to submit to the other's terms, but no trade is made until one of you changes the order to match the other's.
In summary, when you create an Order, if there's not an already existing opposite price-matched order to fulfill it, you get put on the books.
Now, instead of just imagining the two of you, picture HUNDREDS of people, and HUNDREDS of robots, all clamoring over each other, creating orders that either trade because they match someone else's or get added to a very busy order book. This is the essence of an exchange.
Buy/Sell Pressure
I'm sure you've heard the old saying, "Supply and Demand", well I'm going to dissect that for you as well because even these terms are vague. Let me introduce you to the concepts of "Buying pressure" and "Selling Pressure". It may be hard at first to figure out how the price can be affected by 'trades' that all have one buyer and one seller each so that seems balanced, but it's not the actual trades that motivate the price, it's instead the "Ratio of Desperate Buy Traders to Desperate Sell Traders".
Very important, the word "Desperate" is key here, because they are the ones that actually make trades. This is in stark contrast to the "Opportunistic Traders", whom create orders (usually stop orders) or invisible buy/sell walls (facilitated by bots) far enough away from the current trading price that it's unlikely they'll execute those orders in normal trading. No, they're hoping for a massive price shift so they can make a lot of profit.
So ignoring Opportunistic Traders for now, the real story is being told by the Desperate Traders. IF THERE ARE MORE Desperate Sellers than Desperate Buyers the price will drop. Why? Because they are now competing for buyers, and the buyers can negotiate a cheaper price because at least SOME of the Desperate Sellers will take a bigger hit.
And the exact opposite works of course. If there are more Desperate Buyers than Desperate Sellers, the price will go up because now the Desperate Buyers are competing for fewer Desperate Sellers, and the Sellers can demand more money because there'll be at least SOME of the Desperate Buyers willing to take a hit.
See how that works? Everything is about Balance, and Symmetry. So let's recap, more Desperate Buyers than Desperate Sellers, and the price will rise, and this is called BUYING PRESSURE. More Desperate Sellers than Desperate Buyers, and the price will drop, and this is called SELLING PRESSURE. What happens if there's 50/50 Desperate Buyers to Desperate Sellers? You guessed it! PRICE STABILITY!!
This is absolutely EVERY SINGLE DETAIL about trading, and everything else you ever hear about trading distills down to what you just read. For example, when Whales crush the price, they are creating SELLING PRESSURE by this exact mechanism, flooding the order books with CHEAP XRP, triggering trade fulfillment of all the orders in the buy side of the order book.
Likewise, when some wave of FOMO kicks in for any number of reasons, it creates intense Buy Pressure, and the price goes up.
I really hope it's absolutely clear now that the ONLY possible way to increase the price is by increasing Buying Pressure, and the only way to lower the price is by increasing Selling Pressure. The is NO SUCH THING as the exchange or anyone else deciding to set a price by hand. This is not a store, nobody goes to an exchange to buy XRP from the exchange itself, you are buying from other people, and they are the ONLY ones that can set a price they themselves are willing to trade for, but they are all competing with each other, so nobody can single-handedly set the market price; end of story.
If you think for even a second that it's possible to 'dictate' the price by any other means than buying or selling pressure, then you really do not understand the concept of an exchange. This isn't to say you can't create an order to sell XRP for some ungodly price, but good luck getting someone to buy it, because there's a bunch of Desperate Sellers asking far less than you. And of course the opposite scenario holds true because there's always symmetry for every single scenario; there's no mechanism that drives the price going UP that doesn't have a mirrored mechanism that brings the price DOWN.
And finally, as long as there is an imbalance in the buying/selling pressure, the price will continue to change, seeking that balancing point. It wants to be balanced because an imbalance is an opportunity for profit so someone will most certainly take it, and an imbalance is corrected instantly.
A balance of buying and selling pressure SETS the price, which naturally settles where the current Desperate Buyers feel they can get a better deal, AND the current Desperate Sellers feel they haven't made enough profit yet.
Very important sentence, please read it a few times.
What does this sentence mean? It most importantly means that if the Desperate Sellers got in at a much lower price, they'll be ready to sell sooner than later. Put another way, AS THE PRICE CLIMBS, MORE DESPERATE SELLERS APPEAR because they have now hit their targets and are looking to cash out. Put yet another way, AS THE PRICE CLIMBS, SELLING PRESSURE INCREASES, which consumes the buy side of the order books, and as the buy side is consumed, the prices the buyers are offering continue to drop. Again, selling pressure reduces the price. And again, you can reverse all the scenarios and it works in perfect mirror-like symmetry; e.g., Buying Pressure increases the price.
PHEW!
The ultimate takeaway I want you to have from this is this one singular point: Price increases = increased selling pressure = lowering of the price.
So how does the price ever actually go anywhere if every price change is met with the opposing pressure? Again, it's about the balance of Desperate Buyers versus Desperate Sellers. With enough Buying pressure, at some point the number of sellers generating the Selling pressure will run out of XRP to sell, and then there's nothing to stop the price from continuing to climb; that is, until the next wave of investors hit their price targets and start creating their own selling pressure. In fact, you will be one of those people some day, when XRP hits your target price, you'll sell your XRP (don't do it), and that, plus many others selling just like you, will be your turn that puts enormous downward pressure on the price.
It's been said many times that the exchanges are merely mechanisms for taking money from the impatient to give to the patient. At the core of it is this: you create buying pressure when you first get in, then you wait, and then you create selling pressure when you get out. Every single investor is the same story, the only difference is 'when' you bought in. Your buying in, is helping someone else to sell out. There's plenty of people that bought long before you did, all with tons and tons of XRP compared to you, and they have already put their time in. Every time the price goes up, some of them, particularly the ones that got in at the beginning, start selling their XRP and are taking the money that you put in. Literally, you are handing them your money, as many other XRP investors are; don't lose sight of that. Must be nice to be an early adopter huh?
Arbitrage
I know, I know, this is probably my third time drilling on arbitrage, but it's important to the debunking I'm embarking on, so I'll go through it again with specific details. In a nutshell, arbitrage is the act of buying slightly cheaper XRP, moving the XRP to an exchange where people are willing to pay more for it, and selling for a profit. This action is the mirror action to how ODL (On-Demand Liquidity) works. But first, let's play out the ODL part:
If I purchase a shit-ton of XRP from a local exchange, I have created buying pressure which creates scarcity as I buy them, and that increases not only the last trade price, but also the BIDDING price on this exchange's BUY book. I then send that XRP to another country's exchange and sell it, creating selling pressure which results in an abundance of XRP there, which drops not only the last trade price, but also the ASKING price on the foreign exchange's SELL book. Now we have a disparity where sellers on the local exchange are asking for more money for their XRP, and BUYERS are offering less money for XRP on the foreign exchange.
This is where arbitrage enters the scene. The arbitrageur will see that they can create the 'inverse' order, where they buy the same amount of XRP at the foreign exchange, which now creates the mirrored 'buying pressure' to raise the price there back to normal again, then they transfer it to the local exchange where they can sell it for the higher price, which creates the mirrored 'selling pressure' that lowers the price back to normal again on the local exchange. No more price disparity exists.
Arbitrage is the perfect 'mirroring' trading activity that renormalizes the price when the BIDS/ASKS at different exchanges become disjointed. It's by this mechanism of arbitrage that every single exchange, INCLUDING OTC exchanges, are forever held together in price. Also very important, Arbitrate "averages" the prices of all the exchanges, not "follows" the peak price
Myth - If one exchange blasts off to say $50 while the others are at 50 cents, then arbitrage won't return the price to 50 cents because the sellers at other exchanges will see the one exchange with $50 and will refuse to sell for less, thereby pushing the price to $50 at all exchanges.
Let's say a dumb whale makes a stupid mega-purchase on a single exchange, practically wiping out the sell order book, costing him a couple million dollars, and the last seller's sell order that it took to complete his order was asking a freakish $50, well that's the new "last trade" price on that exchange! Tada! $50 fucking dollars!! Holy shit, I just ran through my screen door! Woohoo!!! Man, break out the champagne and... wait, wait,, what?? It's already dropping back down to 50 cents??? WTF?? I thought we just said all the exchanges were going to jump to $50 as soon as they saw it?
I'll tell you what happened. When the dumb whale made his purchase, he instantly cleared out the SELL side of the order book removing all the cheaper orders, until his order was finally filled, and the last trade price was shown at $50, but NONE of this affects the BUY side of the order book!! The BUY side still shows buy orders in the realm of 50 cents!
But why didn't the buyers at this exchange change their orders to offer to pay $50 to follow the SELL side price change?? Ask yourself, now why would ANY of these buyers be REMOTELY interested in paying $50 fucking dollars for XRP, when they can still buy XRP for 50 cents at any other exchange?? It doesn't matter what the last trade price was, the fact remains that buyers are not going to follow the price up the rabbit hole when they can just buy anywhere else for cheap!
In other words, the $50 trade just creates an illusion to inexperienced eyes, the real value is in the order books. Since nobody is willing to actually buy XRP at $50, soon enough more desperate sellers will replace the all the orders that were cleared out by the dumb whale, and they'll be selling for 50 cents again because nobody else is going to buy their XRP for $50, and the next trade that occurs will be around 50 cents, ending the $50 debacle.
Still stuck? Look at it this way then. One trade does not permanently change the ratio of buying pressure to selling pressure, it just temporarily knocks it off balance, but once that trade completes, the original buying and selling pressure returns the price to its original balancing point. There's NO WAY it will be possible to get ALL the sellers to COLLUDE to raise the price, simply because there will always be more Desperate sellers out there that are more than happy to undercut the manipulators. This is what a free market is all about, well, excluding the whales of course ;)
But let's play out the scenario where everyone at all exchanges decided to follow the price to $50, meaning every buyer and seller decided to change their orders to $50 anyways because they saw it first hit $50 at this other exchange. This INSTANTLY creates a TSUNAMI of Selling Pressure from all the heavy holders whose targets have now been hit. Since there's no actual new money coming into the market (we just fixed the price remember), the BUY order books will clear out almost instantly, crushing the price to precisely where it was before, to once again come into an equilibrant state at 50 cents.
This is my point, the price is not some random number. Again, A balance of buying and selling pressure SETS the price, which naturally settles where the current Desperate Buyers feel they can get a better deal, AND the current Desperate Sellers feel they haven't made enough profit yet. When the price changes, an imbalance forms. If the price goes up, the early adopters start cashing out, increasing selling pressure, and lowering the price back to balanced. If the price goes down, buyers increase, increasing buying pressure, raising the price back to balanced. This is why the price doesn't randomly set itself, because changes in the price radically increase either buying or selling pressure, trying to rebalance.
Really hope this all made sense. I know, it's hard to see where all the forces are in play, but it's best to start with the frame of mind that for every action there's a reaction, so don't ever think these numbers are floating around in the sky and can be frivolously bumped around without consequences. It is a violent tug-of-war going on, and you're not going to pull the team on the other side of the rope, a mile down the road in one leap. You may not fully understand all these forces, but there's absolutely nothing more to it than what I've described above.
It'll be easier to grasp if you let go of the hopium desire that the price can move quickly, and focus more on it being like a tug-of-war with no massive moves possible. Sure, in the beginning when there were only a handful of tug-of-war players, Ripple had a few goliaths pulling on one side and they just dragged the entire other team up like crazy, but both sides of the buyer/seller rope have thousands of pullers now, and there's no fucking way one side is going to be able to radically and SUSTAINABLY pull the other like that again, the mass is too large.
Myth - Ripple and/or the banks will quickly boost the price of XRP and hold it at a higher value to allow ODL to bootstrap
Make the leap to understanding that the exchanges are nothing more than money movers. Whatever money you end up with, had to come from someone else. There's no such thing as a money tree. Therefore, in order for you to become a millionaire, one or more other persons or businesses, HAS TO dump a million dollars into XRP so you can take their money. That's just your million. Chances are there's a whole fuckbus full of people with tons more XRP than you, and would be quite happy to cash out long before you became a millionaire.
So that means you need to wait until all of them have been fed. By my calculations, about 66,000 people will have at LEAST a million dollars worth of XRP if it gets to $100. Think about that. The selling pressure will be incomprehensible. Even using conservative attempts to choose an "average" exit point of one million dollars, that means $66 BILLION dollars will have to go into the hands of all these 66,000 people
I know some of you are confused by this, so let me step back a bit.
Imagine if you had 10,000 XRP, and your exit point is $1 million dollars (sure everyone's different, but this is a reasonable estimate of the average I'd say). That means you're looking for XRP to hit $100. So what happens when XRP gets to $100? You put a sell order in for 10,000 XRP at $100 each and NOTHING is going to stop you. Soon enough VOILA, your order is executed, and you are a fucking millionaire, man!! YESSS!! Oh GOD, I've waited so fucking long!! I can't believe it!! I'm here baby! Daddy's getting a new car! Daddy's quitting his fucking job! Daddy's fixing the screen door!! Wooohoo!!
You're not the only one either. The entire climb, there were another 66,000 newly minted millionaires, just selling their XRP, getting their millions....and beating the living shit out of the price of XRP the whole time because of all the selling pressure. If the price is to go any higher, even MORE millions of dollars has to keep pouring in to keep feeding the new millionaires who are all cashing out, just like you did.
Where the fuck is all that money going to come from?? There's this curious theory that Ripple, for some unbelievable reason, not only has the resources to, but the inclination to spend $66 BILLION to give to all these aforementioned millionaires. It seems a popular misconception that the price can be pushed really high, but at least one of the following MUST be true for this to happen:
Ridiculous argument #1) Nobody will sell their XRP
Yes, that's the quickest way to $100. So how do you discourage or prevent people from selling? You can't, there's nothing that can be done. All these millionaires are going to get their lambos and yachts no matter what, and that will be constant selling pressure that keeps the price down.
Ridiculous argument #2) It's only the order book that needs to be bought out. A few million dollars can send the price soaring!
Very common misconception. Ok, let's play it out, a whale goes to an exchange and buys out the entire sell order book, and for some mythological reason, even the buyers raise their order prices to $50, raising the effective trade price to $50. Now because the price changed, we've created enormous selling pressure from all the people that have suddenly now hit their exit prices. The very next thing that happens is an absolute landrush of people and bots pulling XRP out of cold storage and sending it all to the exchanges to dump as much as possible, refilling the sell books as fast as they can be bought out. This fresh XRP is called "hidden liquidity". The order book is only the visible part of the overall liquidity. The hidden part, is absolutely incomprehensibly larger. There will be an ENDLESS torrent of new XRP constantly pouring in, just beating the shit out of the price with its bottomless selling pressure, until it once again is rebalanced where it started.
Ridiculous argument #3) Ripple has $66 Billion?? And they'd buy all early adopters XRP back?
No, they don't. And why would they put that much money in the hands of the XRP investors just so they can buy back the very XRP they worked so hard to distribute in the first place?? Holy shit, this has to be the stupidest suggestion of all time. It really hurts
Ridiculous argument #4) Banks are willing to spend $66 Billion to be able to use ODL. Billions are a drop in the bucket compared to the trillions size of cross-border transfers
First off, when banks are sending trillions of dollars, they are not paying trillions of dollars to SWIFT, they are paying FEES to SWIFT to TRANSFER trillions, and those fees are a small fraction of trillions. We are talking about fees, not the amounts being transferred. Secondly, these fees are MUCH smaller, making the prospect of paying $66 BILLION DOLLARS to early adopters absolutely outrageous. Banks want to use ODL to SAVE money on FEES!! How the fuck are they saving money on fees if it costs them BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to PAY to get the early adopters out of the way to stop their selling pressure so the price can stabilize at a higher price? It's incredibly asinine.
Ridiculous argument #5) Buy/Sell walls can hold the price
Well, yes, but this is PRECISELY the mechanism that PAYS the early adopters! Did you think Brad was going to cut them a check?? Buy/Sell walls are just constantly refreshed orders with the objective of keeping the price locked in a desired range, which it does do, but that doesn't stop the selling whatsoever. If "someone" bumps the price up to $100, and tries to wall that in, those buy-wall orders will be consumed at an incredible rate, requiring endless money outlays to keep placing more buy-wall orders to keep the wall intact! Whoever it is trying to wall in the price has to keep the money coming in like a fucking firehose because of the enormous selling pressure caused by radically increasing the price like this. Where will all these billions of dollars come from? Point 3? Point 4? Magical money-shitting fairies? It will cost $66 billion dollars to erect a BUY wall to keep XRP at $100. Nuff said.
Ridiculous argument #6) Ripple is willing to cover slippage to make it possible for ODL to remain competitive
Ripple/ODL/LPs will cover ONLY volatility slippage, NOT consumption slippage (explained here). Miguel Vias clearly is ONLY speaking about volatility slippage in this video
Ridiculous argument #7) There is a veritable TIDAL WAVE of ODL customers just WAITING on the sidelines for XRP to hit the right price point before they start using it
Based on what? Blind faith? This isn't true at all. Ripple has already stated that ODL is in use, and apparently has had a billion dollars already travel the pipes (citation needed), so it seems that it is in use, and probably has a lot of headroom for volume and possibly larger transfers. There's no discernible ODL traffic showing in my charts so it seems to me that it's just not being extensively used yet. Ask yourself, if there was a backlog of customers just itching to use it, why wouldn't it be used for small transfers at least to the point of current ODL capacity? It's because there's no hidden fucking wall of ODL customers waiting for the price to go up.
Ridiculous argument #8) Ripple has no choice, they have to raise the price or ODL just doesn't work. You don't think they have a plan for this?
Yes, and their self-stated plan is to start with low-value payments, particularly with remittance companies. These payments fit well within existing liquidity so it sets the stage for future growth. It seems people fail to understand that it's not necessary to be $100 level of liquidity from day one. ODL works TODAY, RIGHT NOW, for smaller payments, and that will only improve as time goes on. To say we need it at $100 today, doesn't acknowledge that it's already in use. It was always the plan to slowly grow over time, there was never a plan to shock and awe the price to be unsustainably higher.
Ridiculous argument #9) ODL customers can use their stash of cheaper XRP to offset the slippage costs from sellers pulling on the price
This is seriously whackadoodle. Ok, so what, so the ODL customers blows through his stash of cheap XRP he received from Ripple as try-it-out coupons. Great! No slippage! Then after a few payments, they run out of cheap XRP. Now what? Kicking the can down the road doesn't eliminate the challenges.
Ridiculous argument #10) More liquidity in the LPs can compensate for lower price
More kicking the can down the road. LPs only serve as a buffer to the exchanges, allowing for an increase in payment sizes, sure, but not a complete solution to the overall missing liquidity that can come from a much higher-valued XRP. LP's are not the liquidity panacea. That price needs to go up, and there's only so many tricks that can be pulled to hide that fact. Moreover, more available liquidity does nothing to hold a price. ODL volume does, so even if we had all kinds of liquidity today, the price would still be largely driven by the speculation monkey until ODL volume picks up. Also, adding XRP to increase liquidity, lowers the price of XRP because it adds more XRP into circulation. In other words, more XRP = more supply = less demand per unit = lower price.
Ridiculous argument #11) We just need to get the price up high enough so that ODL can set the platform under it and keep it propped up
Again, until we have ODL volume high enough to sustain the platform, it doesn't matter where the price is set, if it were even possible to set, because it's still going to fall the second they stop pouring billions of dollars into the hands of the early investors.
Please understand, no matter how you spin it, those early investors are going to be an absolutely massive barrier to radical price changes, and there's no force powerful enough to overwhelm their selling pressure. It will take time, and billions of dollars more in new investor influx, and I'm not talking about Market Cap billions (I wish!), I'm talking real fucking money from other people just like you and me.
Sure, you can say that the institutional money is coming, but they don't play the way we do. They make money off of volatility, not price increases, so any belief that they are going to pour a garbage can of money over your head is just sticking a hopium needle in your eye so it hits you quicker.
I also hear a lot of reference to the January $3.80 XRP price point as an example of what can happen. Know this, that massive pump and dump had absolutely fucking ZERO to do with the virtues of XRP! It was because XRP was "coupled" to BTC and it was BTC driving that market surge; XRP just went along for the ride, just like Dogecoin did. Could that happen again? Sure! But again, that would have nothing to do with ODL or ANY of the strategies we're talking about here, and would also DUMP just as hard again, so don't try to tell me $3.80 has any relevance to the future value of XRP. We are not in it for the false pumps
Even a SUSTAINABLE $5 for XRP (not a parabolic pump and dump like the $3.80 was) requires $7 billion dollars of fresh money to come in. That's a boatload of cash. And no, ODL does NOT provide any of that money because it just TRANSFERS money, in and then back out, so that money doesn't contribute to the $7 billion that would need to go to the early investors in order to raise the price. ODL only SUSTAINS a price commensurate to ODL volume and can't push the price up, explained here. $7 billion dollars has to come from new XRP speculators, and that's not happening any time soon. Reaching $5 is like climbing Mount Everest, and you'll still be no closer to the moon. I'm a poet and I know it.
Frankenmath is everywhere, simply because the real math is hard, very hard, and it can be easy to follow a path that seems easier, but that path is a fantasy. Any time you see any Virgin Math of A x B, be very skeptical that it has any value at all, because there is NO WAY the price of XRP, current or future, can be calculated from just one or two parameters. And be especially wary of any math that suggests unbounded gains in a short period of time because that violates the principle of market symmetry.
The value of XRP 'will' go up eventually, non-disappointingly, within reality. Stop trying to see miracles on top of the miracle we already see. Hodl, go back to your life, come back when XRP is ready.
Comments welcome at Twitter (No tips please. And please forgive me for not replying to every comment for the sake of brevity)