Saad Ullah
Wall Street veteran Fred Krueger caused a stir claiming "not one actual human being" uses XRP, sparking angry responses from the crypto's community.
The XRP community is absolutely losing it over what a Wall Street veteran just said. Fred Krueger, who's worked at big firms like Salomon Brothers and Greenwich Capital, basically called out the entire XRP ecosystem by saying "not one actual human being" is actually using the token for anything real.
Krueger didn't hold back either. The guy has a Ph.D. from Stanford and calls himself a "Bitcoin maximalist," so his bias is pretty obvious. He said holding XRP doesn't even count as using it – which honestly stung because that's what most people do with crypto anyway.
The XRP crowd wasn't having it. Matt Hamilton, who used to work at Ripple, fired back with a real example: "I literally just sent some XRP to help out a friend. I am in the UK, they are in the US. It was the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way," he posted on X.
Other XRP holders jumped in too, talking about buying meme coins and NFTs on XRP Ledger. But Krueger's not impressed – he thinks these are weak use cases compared to Bitcoin.
XRP Community Shows Real Usage Examples
Here's where it gets messy though. A 2020 study found that 96% of XRP network transactions had no economic value. That's... not great if you're trying to prove people actually use your token for real stuff.
But the community keeps pushing back. They're sharing stories about cross-border payments, trading on XRPL, and other actual uses. The problem is Krueger sees all this and still thinks it's not enough to matter.
What's wild is XRP is still the third-biggest crypto by market cap despite all this arguing. Either Krueger's missing something, or a lot of people are just hoping XRP becomes useful someday.
XRP Banking Dreams vs Reality
The banking thing is where Krueger really has a point. XRP was supposed to revolutionize how banks move money internationally, but most banks are still using the same old SWIFT system they've used for decades.
Sure, Ripple has their on-demand liquidity (ODL) solution that uses XRP as a bridge asset, but actual bank adoption is pretty scarce. You'll see the occasional partnership announcement, but widespread usage? Not really happening.
Krueger's been consistent about this criticism. Earlier this year, he trashed the idea of putting XRP in the U.S. strategic reserve. In January, he called XRP one of "the most ridiculous" tokens alongside Cardano (ADA) and Chainlink (LINK).
Look, both sides have points here. Hamilton's cross-border payment worked exactly like XRP supporters say it should. But Krueger's asking the bigger question: is this really making a dent in how the world moves money?
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. XRP isn't completely useless – people do use it for payments and trading. But it's also not the banking revolution everyone expected years ago.
This whole debate shows XRP's biggest problem: it's caught between being a speculative investment and trying to prove it has real utility. Until banks actually start using it at scale or regular people adopt it for everyday payments, skeptics like Krueger will keep asking tough questions.
Whether that matters for XRP's price depends on what investors think it's worth and whether they believe the utility story will eventually come true.
Saad Ullah
