Fact: some parts of the XRP community are world leading when it comes to building up ridiculous expectations — and then spreading negativity once they got disappointed…affecting XRP’s very own success and dismissing/frustrating 160+ very hardworking people at Ripple.

And no, please don’t blame a 3–2–1 countdown. We all know the overall XRP strategy. We know how critical it is to first build open (ie interledger) payment rails so XRP is enabled to fully deliver on its mission as the world’s most valuable and efficient digital bridge asset. And yes, it is big news when Ripple iterates into 2 billion consumers when the foundation of the world’s richest man publicly commmits to implementing Ripple’s interconnectivity solution. And yes, it is big news when the two biggest protocols (Hyperledger and Interledger) team up, and enable Ripple to maybe spend even more time on the next building block of their strategy (XRP). Ripple signing its 100th customer? Nah. SEB confirming it moved >$180MM of payments via RippleNet? Boring. Ripple kicking off a $300MM (ANY CRYPTO who can do this?) incentive scheme for banks to join and grow payments volume on RippleNet? Lame. The first FI to publicly commit to use XRP? Not good enough.

Those ones in the community with an obvious lack of vision & patience are not only causing unneccessary XRP volatility (watch pre Swell vs post Swell), but worse, frustrate the ones (at Ripple) that have a *tremendous* impact on the future value of XRP. Yes, there’s a benefit of Ripple employees feeling some market pressure — but it’s a fine line. When watching the first Swell panel (with AirBnB, GE & Worldbank) it felt to me as if panelists were almost ‘pressured’ into pro-Ripple statements. It might have made them feel uncomfortable.

I know big corporates (and especially banks!) inside out, and I know it’s almost impossible to get shiny public endorsements from them. It must be frustrating for Ripple not being able to share closed-door enthusiasm with us, but hey, they should be able to expect from us that we understand that signing a bank as customer is the equivalent to an endorsement.

I had to get this off my chest, sorry.

So, we all want XRP to succeed. Ripple folks working day and night, weekdays and weekends. But what can WE do?

XRPs success heavily depends on XRP itself. The higher XRP trades, the more $ value of customer/ adoption incentives is available for Ripple to distribute, fueling further demand. It is *indeed* a virtous circle. I can’t stop highlighting how critical that is to understand. The stronger your hands (ok I say it, “HODL!”), the more likely is XRP’s, and the more likely is your very own success. I would like to see every one of us evolve into the most forward thinking & smartest hodl’ers the moon has ever seen. I would like to see the available supply just being *massively* reduced. If someone wants to buy into our digital oil, he will have to pay up.

Educate yourself, start blogging, become active in social media. XRPchat, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit. I started becoming active on Twitter some time ago — it helped me to remain curious and educated. Don’t become too emotional when discussing with ignorant trolls, share the facts, try to be nice (I know it’s hard sometimes).

I’m the world’s most terrible coder. If you can do better, get in touch with the folks at Ripple/Interledger or eg the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and see if there’s something you can build on top of ILP/Ripple. If you know coders, start a dialogue, get people involved.

Any other thoughts and ideas on how to add value? I’m happy to amend this write up. Please leave a comment.

View the original article here: Medium.com