Meanwhile, in the Wild Wild West that is the increasingly ridiculous cryptocurrency space, Ripple is back above $2 after rebounding from a pretty dramatic selloff that saw the world’s second-largest digital coin drop 34% from the highs hit on December 30.
Looking at a 5-day chart shows the extent to which this is basically just a penny stock in terms of both price and how it trades:
Hilariously, the furious December rally saw Ripple’s “market cap” (a misnomer) rise to a truly outlandish $105 billion. It leapfrogged Ethereum in the process.
But as you’re probably aware by now, you can’t appreciate how truly absurd the Ripple rally is until you pan out to a one-year chart at which point you find out that a digital token with a literal fidget spinner for a logo rose 32,000% in 2017:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that gives whole new meaning to the word “bubble.”
Well, that chart means that Cofounder and former CEO Chris Larsen is now worth something like $38 billion. Here’s Chris and his blue eyes:
And here’s Forbes to provide some perspective on that:
That would make him the 15th richest American on the 2017 Forbes 400 list as of Monday, tying him with Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO and current owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers. He ranks a bit ahead of Abigail Johnson, the CEO of Fidelity, who is herself a big cryptocurrency fan, plus  hedge funder Ray Dalio and investor Carl Icahn, both of whom have made headlines for calling Bitcoin a bubble.
Larsen also cofounded and served as CEO of Prosper – that would be the peer-to-peer lending company that accidentally lent money to Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooter.
Meanwhile, current CEOÂ Brad Garlinghouse is now worth about $9.5 billion, making him the 54th richest American.
As Forbes dryly notes, “the huge swings in the value of Ripple, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies mean that there is no guarantee that any of these folks will still be billionaires when Forbes publishes its next list in March.”
Right. Hell, they might not even be on the list tomorrow. Then again, they might be twice as rich as Jeff Bezos by Friday. There’s no telling.
Stop resisting and just get on the money train.
you’re a moron. did you even read the above? that is never going to work. the idea that if Ripple goes to $7 he is richer than Jeff Bezos is the very definition of insanity. take a step back and think about that for a second.
You think logic and sanity is running any of these markets right now…..crypto or stock? Just b/c I make money on insanity don’t make me a moron. I was also talking about crypto market as a whole, not just ripple. Get in on the fun while it lasts. Just b/c it’s a bubble don’t mean u can’t make money on it.
And why do you call your avid reader a moron? That’s not nice.
lol. don’t worry, I think everyone’s a moron. Even me.
XRP is one crypto to only buy to play the FOMO greater fool trade and the time for that was months ago. Read up on how Ripple works and you will know why XRP will trend towards 0 over time even if Ripple is a highly successful company. Nobody ever has to buy or have XRP tokens to use Ripple. Ripple is not like BTC or LTC. I am long crypto’s but no interest in touching XRP.