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At the beginning of November, a friend from the community privately asked me what I thought about XRP. I pondered that this friend was new to the crypto space and didn't have much investment experience. Could I use XRP as an example to demonstrate an analysis system? Thus, the following conversation ensued:

Me: What do you think about XRP? First, do you understand what it is for?

Friend: I'm not very clear, I only know that its market value is relatively high, more stable compared to other altcoins, and has been in litigation with the SEC. It seems that Trump's administration might have a chance to alleviate this litigation relationship, but I haven't looked into what this coin specifically does.

Me: Alright, then regarding the question 'It seems that Trump’s administration might have a chance to alleviate this litigation relationship'... is this information reliable?

Friend: Not very reliable, I saw it on Twitter, it's just speculation.

Me: Then this isn’t reliable, let’s not talk about understanding for now. Let’s first look at the K-line and market value. What is XRP's market value now?

Friend: 31 billion, ranking fifth, that's really high!

Me: If you buy it, how many times do you expect it to increase? Are you brave enough to go all in? This thing clearly isn't something you dare to invest heavily in because you don't know it well. If it rises tenfold, that’s 310 billion, then it would be second...

Friend: 310 billion is impossible because I can't buy a big pie. I see it is relatively stable, so I was thinking whether to speculate and buy a little, but I don't dare to go all in.

Regarding the conversation about XRP, it ended there at the time. Just less than a month later, XRP rose from 0.55 to 2.41, more than quadrupling.

Today I asked that friend again. I asked, it seems like you missed out on XRP, doesn’t that feel bad? He said, not really, just feels absurd, how did it reach over 100 billion?

Absurd, can it not be absurd? I think many people also find it absurd, which is why I want to talk to everyone about it today. To be honest, I have been in the blockchain space for six years and have never used the Ripple network. XRP is something I have not understood to this day. Of course, not understanding doesn’t mean I don’t know what XRP is; rather, I haven’t figured out the logic of holding it.

XPR is the currency running on RippleNet, which is operated by Ripple. The function of RippleNet is to create an efficient, low-cost solution for cross-border payments. In simple terms, it's a cross-border payment network where XRP can be freely exchanged for fiat currencies from various countries.

From my personal perspective, the only two reasons I would invest in such projects are that the user base continues to grow rapidly, and the company's main business continues to grow rapidly. Unfortunately, XRP seems not to fall within either of these categories, and through my analysis, I found that it is a bona fide 'whale coin.'

In 2004, Ripple founder Ryan Fugger established RipplePay, and in 2013 it was renamed Ripple, focusing on B2B cross-border remittance services and exploring cooperation with various banks and financial institutions. Early on, Ripple's senior vice president mentioned in an interview that half of their clients were banks, and the other half were fintech payment providers, with 25% of bank partners being top-tier banks such as Bank of Tokyo, Mitsubishi Bank, Santander, and Standard Chartered.

That’s not the case; many well-known partners of Ripple have long terminated their relationships. For example, Santander, the largest bank in the EU, froze Ripple after finding that XRP could not meet customer needs; MoneyGram also terminated its partnership with Ripple due to increasing costs of XRP payments.

It's worth mentioning that according to Ripple's own past claims of over forty countries and more than two hundred clients, Ripple should have excellent revenue. However, the reality is that Ripple has never disclosed its profitability, and related partners seldom have Ripple's financial service use cases or frequency. The two most critical reference standards for investment decisions are hidden like a black box beneath the surface, which in itself is a significant problem. Furthermore, if viewed from the most pessimistic perspective, if Ripple's business volume is just for show, how is their team managing their inventory?

You’re not wrong; the answer is selling coins. The XRP held by Ripple is divided into two parts: one part is in its wallet, and the other part is in ledger custody. Between just September and December 2023, Ripple officially reduced its holdings by 185 million XRP, and the XRP under ledger custody was reduced by 600 million. If we count from March 2023 to April 2023, Ripple sold a total of 3.4 billion XRP, all calculated at 0.5 dollars, yielding an income of up to 1.7 billion dollars. This is not something Ripple started doing this year; as early as 2019, foreign media speculated that Ripple's total revenue was 652 million dollars, with 80% of that coming from XRP sales.

Even earlier, XRP had already been criticized by investors, and the response from Ripple's CTO was that XRP was merely a derivative of the company's business, and they needed to reasonably release XRP to ensure funding for R&D. This reasoning is not problematic; it’s not an issue for the project party to sell coins. The problem is that XRP is not just about selling; it often involves enticing institutions to sell, coordinating positive news to drive prices, and the methods are very sophisticated.

Note, I’m talking about means, not methods. What everyone might be most concerned about with XRP is the entanglement with the SEC; many crypto enthusiasts express support for Ripple and believe it truly is a crypto fighter. Many probably also know that the SEC sued Ripple because of securities law issues, but what many don’t know is that when the SEC sued Ripple in December 2020, the indictment detailed evidence that the SEC profited 1.3 billion dollars.

In 2017 and 2018, Ripple signed agreements with at least 10 CEXs to pay these CEXs in XRP to allow trading of XRP, and there were also trading incentive rewards set up. Additionally, during the token issuance process, Ripple established a market team specifically responsible for monitoring XRP's price and trading volume and regularly communicated with market maker teams for currency value management to ensure that the XRP sold would be within 10 to 25 basis points of the daily trading volume.

Naturally, currency value management will also align with news. Since 2016, XRP has been significantly rising and falling in response to news. On August 12, 2017, Ripple's founder directly instructed Ripple's related employees to actively promote news to increase speculative value. One clear instance was coordinating buybacks; the market report for the third quarter of 2020 disclosed Ripple's 45 million dollar buyback news, and XRP's price rose in response. This year, news related to the struggle with the SEC and the release of stablecoin-related news were used to drive prices.

To this day, Ripple Labs still holds over 50% of XRP, with a circulating market value of 130 billion and a total market value of 230 billion, making it the largest 'whale coin' in the crypto circle, without a doubt. As an ordinary person, I can only keep my distance, even if it rises fivefold in a month.

Not understanding means not touching it, which is the greatest protection for your assets.