Eric Yakes—a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and the author of The 7th Property: Bitcoin and the Monetary Revolution—published a blunt critique of Ripple and its associated XRP token on February 10. Yakes, who also operates in the Bitcoin venture capital sector as Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Epoch, voiced his disapproval on X with unusually stark language and a detailed rundown of what he perceives as significant flaws in Ripple’s value proposition and governance.
Yakes Slams Ripple And XRP
Yakes opened his post with a broad attack on 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. In his view, this research left him convinced that the company’s technology and token economics resembled the very sort of centralized monetary issuance that Bitcoin was designed to eradicate.
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
The XRP community, however, wasted no time in responding, with some voices immediately branding Yakes’s statements as misinformation. One of the more notable responses came from Matt Hamilton, a developer who once worked at Ripple and has also been affiliated with Protocol Labs and Bittensor. Hamilton contested what he sees as Yakes’s conflation of Ripple the company and XRP the cryptocurrency. “Ripple and XRP are different things. One is a company (like Strike), one is a cryptocurrency (like Bitcoin). The stated goals of remittances and CBDCs apply specifically to Ripple, not XRP,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton also pushed back on Yakes’s point about XRP’s volatility, suggesting that because transactions on the XRP Ledger settle so quickly, the volatility factor is much less significant than Yakes implies. Referencing the broader ecosystem that exists on the XRP Ledger, Hamilton noted, “You can equally use stablecoins on the XRP Ledger (blockchain) if you wish.” He also sought to clarify certain public narratives about Ripple’s partnerships, arguing that while incentivizing early adoption is common practice for young companies seeking liquidity, it does not invalidate the protocol’s underlying utility.
When addressing the technical aspects of the XRP Ledger, Hamilton stressed that the ledger did not undergo a unilateral shutdown. According to him, the network halt that occurred last week was due to a failure to achieve immediate consensus, which he described as a designed response rather than evidence of centralized control. Hamilton stated, “The network halted as designed due to temporarily being unable to reach consensus. This was not someone ‘unilaterally stopping it.’ The network then resumed once able to.” He added that thousands of Bitcoin nodes run without direct financial incentives, underscoring that a similar principle can apply to validators in other open blockchain networks, including the XRP Ledger.
Hamilton further disputed Yakes’s assertions regarding Ripple’s origins and political activities, saying that Ripple is indeed a US based company, whereas the XRP Ledger Foundation is a separate entity registered in Estonia that is now relocating to France.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.48.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
