In brief
- The group has been focusing on pumping the price of XRP today.
- Its creators insist they are affiliated neither with the r/wallstreetbets subreddit, nor with Ripple.
- XRP’s price is already up 150% this week.
The price of XRP surged 45% over the weekend, spiking even further this morning to surpass $0.75.
What’s strange is that this comes at a time when Ripple, the company most focused on the coin, is being sued by the SEC for allegedly selling unregistered securities, an issue that has forced many crypto exchanges to either pause trading of the coin or delist it altogether.
But despite that, the coin seems to be riding on the back of the WallStreetBets movement, with one Telegram group in particular seemingly responsible for this massive pump.
The ‘Pump and Hold XRP’ group
On Saturday, a telegram group was created with the sole purpose of encouraging its following to buy and hold XRP—as opposed to buying it and dumping it on the market (although this is likely just semantics). Within 24 hours, the amassed 200,000 members, reaching Telegram’s limit. This led to creation of a second group (t.me/pumpxrpofficial)—that now has 95,000 followers—where the pumping continues.
The focus appears to be on pushing the coin on today’s date, even though the coin started rising over the weekend. The organizer of the Telegram channel, known as The XRP Bully, posted a video on Saturday, with the title implying that today will be the main focus of the pump.
“February 1 will be an amazing date! It’s a worldwide initiative, and it’s interesting to see what people as a community can do,” he said. The organiser added some disclosures, including that crypto is a risky investment and people should be accepting the whole responsibility for potential losses.
The person in the video stressed that “there will be no XRP dump.” Instead, his plan is to boost the asset’s price by purchasing as many tokens as possible and holding them. Although it’s unclear how many followers will be able to resist the urge to sell at unexpected price highs.
The XRP Bully also stressed that there can be no value in just price performance: the true value derives from the developers creating things.
“With so many unbanked people in the world, we need a community of XRP developers to create apps on the XRP ledger. That’s how the value will come. XRP offers a superb use case, and this a golden opportunity.”
What comes after February 1st? Let's discuss!
— THE XRP BULLY (@THEXRPBULLY) February 1, 2021
According to the statement, today’s “event will be a catalyst to further developments.”
It’s not quite clear what are the exact plans of this particular group of people, and how exactly they are going to spur the development of applications based on the XRP ledger. But for the followers who helped pump its price 150% in the last week, that doesn’t seem to be their prime focus.