Cheeky Crypto YouTube channel made a video that centered around XRP comments from Caitlin Long, CEO of Custodia Bank and a well-known Bitcoin advocate.
Long claimed that the XRP ledger is not decentralized, accused Ripple of lacking transparency at launch, and suggested the platform falls short of modern financial standards. Given her profile in the industry, her criticism disturbed many in the XRP community.
Caitlin Long’s Claims and the XRP Army’s Response
Caitlin Long’s remarks painted Ripple (XRP) as a project that banks should not trust. She argued that Ripple conducted an ICO-like launch, that the XRP ledger is centralized, and that the company raised money in questionable ways. These comments triggered strong reactions from the XRP community, often referred to as the XRP Army.
One of the most detailed rebuttals came from an XRPL validator known as Vette. He outlined five reasons why Long’s claims were misleading. According to his research, Ripple never held an ICO. Instead, 100 billion XRP tokens were created at the ledger’s genesis in 2012, with no public token sale.
Ripple’s founders kept a significant portion of these XRP tokens and sold them gradually over the years, often through over-the-counter deals or programmatic sales, not via a one-time event.
Vette also addressed the decentralization claim. The XRP ledger currently runs on more than 1,000 nodes, with over 100 active validators. Many of these validators are operated by third parties, including universities and independent entities.
The network is permissionless, meaning anyone can join and validate transactions. Even if Ripple ceased to exist, the network could continue operating. Over time, Ripple has reduced its influence on the default validator list, making control even more distributed.
Examining the Double Standards in Long’s Claim
Another key point of contention was Long’s praise for Bitcoin and Ethereum as more trustworthy because they did not raise large sums before launch. While Bitcoin had no fundraising event, Ethereum’s launch included a well-documented crowdsale in 2014 that raised Bitcoin in exchange for ETH tokens.
Critics in the XRP community argued that dismissing Ripple for raising funds while overlooking Ethereum’s ICO is a double standard.
The discussion also turned to Ripple’s upcoming stablecoin, RLUSD. Long suggested that issuing a stablecoin, and doing so partly on Ethereum, signaled that the XRP ledger had failed to gain traction.
Ripple supporters countered that RLUSD will also be issued natively on the XRP ledger, leveraging its built-in decentralized exchange and low-cost payment features. The move to also launch it on Ethereum was seen as a strategic way to reach the broader DeFi ecosystem, not an abandonment of XRP.
Ripple’s Track Record and the Bigger Picture
Long’s final criticism was that Ripple has not achieved significant results despite operating for over a decade. She pointed to the fact that SWIFT still dominates cross-border payments.
The XRP community responded by highlighting Ripple’s steady progress, including partnerships with financial institutions, the growth of on-demand liquidity services, technological upgrades like NFT support, and the early development of tokenization features and a built-in decentralized exchange.
Ripple has also engaged in central bank digital currency pilots and made strategic acquisitions to strengthen its ecosystem. The company survived a lengthy legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, winning a landmark ruling that XRP itself is not a security.
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In the end, Cheeky Crypto’s coverage suggested that Long’s criticisms either lacked full context or were shaped by personal bias.
While Ripple has not yet replaced SWIFT or made XRP a global reserve currency, the platform continues to evolve and maintain a strong presence in the blockchain space. For many in the XRP community, the debate reinforced their belief that the Ripple token remains a vital part of the future of payments.
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