{"id":24915,"date":"2025-05-02T15:02:37","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T15:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=24915"},"modified":"2025-05-02T15:02:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T15:02:37","slug":"ripple-is-fake-it-till-you-make-it-on-steroids-claims-moonrock-capital-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/?p=24915","title":{"rendered":"Ripple Is \u2018Fake It Till You Make It On Steroids,\u2019 Claims Moonrock Capital CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The disclosure of Ripple Labs Inc.\u2019s overture to purchase Circle Internet Financial for a reported $4 billion to $5 billion has ignited a rare public broadside from within the digital-asset industry itself, while simultaneously spotlighting diverging philosophies about how crypto networks should be commercialized.<\/p>\n

Simon Dedic, chief executive of the venture firm Moonrock Capital, took direct aim at Ripple\u2019s approach in a post on X, writing that an attempted takeover of Circle would be \u201cthe ultimate example of \u2018fake it till you make it\u2019 on steroids.\u201d Dedic alleged that \u201cfor a decade\u201d Ripple\u2019s business model has been \u201chyping up [its] community with empty promises and flashy news\u2014all just to pump the XRP token to absurd, centi-billion-dollar valuations.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued: \u201cThen you sell off your tokens, build a massive war chest, and try to use it to buy one of the most legitimate and profitable companies in the industry. If it weren\u2019t so scammy, I\u2019d almost be impressed by the execution and endurance of Brad Garlinghouse and team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ripple declined to comment on Dedic\u2019s characterization. The company\u2019s acquisition proposal<\/a>, first reported by Bloomberg on Wednesday, was rebuffed by Circle, which is preparing an initial public offering penciled in for early April and believes the numbers put forward \u201cundervalue the franchise,\u201d according to people familiar with the talks. Circle likewise declined public comment on the approach, reiterating that its near-term focus remains on the IPO process<\/a> and on the growth of its USDC stablecoin.<\/p>\n

Ripple, whose XRP Ledger was designed for cross-border payments and settlement, is no stranger to large cheques. Just last month the San Francisco-based firm agreed to acquire prime-brokerage platform Hidden Road<\/a> for $1.25 billion, one of the largest deals in crypto to date. The attempted Circle takeover, however, would dwarf that transaction and, if consummated, fold the two largest non-algorithmic dollar-backed stablecoins besides Tether under a new roof.<\/p>\n

Ripple = A High Agency Creator<\/h2>\n

The bid has also rekindled a long-running debate about the role that founding teams and their affiliated foundations should play once a network is live. Hunter Horsley, chief executive officer of Bitwise Asset Management, argued on X that the market often overlooks \u201cthe role of creators in commercialization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horsley argued that the episode illustrates the \u201chigh-agency creator\u201d model increasingly common among Layer-1 protocols. He set up a spectrum with three archetypes. \u201cNo agency creator: Bitcoin. Medium agency creator: Ethereum, Bittensor, etc. High agency creator: Solana, Avalanche, Aptos, Sui, Ripple, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bitwise CEO added that projects in the third category \u201chave Labs and foundations alongside them with resources, organized talent, and a desire to foster adoption.\u201d In his view, the capacity of such entities to \u201cbend fate to win\u201d means that \u201cthe best product doesn\u2019t always win. Sometimes it\u2019s the best go-to-market. Are you factoring this dimension into your expectations?\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Horsley sees Ripple\u2019s acquisitive streak as a textbook example of high-agency strategy in action, contrasting with protocols such as Bitcoin that rely almost exclusively on emergent community coordination. Dedic\u2019s critique, by contrast, frames Ripple\u2019s approach as opportunistic asset-flipping financed by treasury XRP sales.<\/p>\n

At press time, XRP traded at $2.22.<\/p>\n

\"XRP<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The disclosure of Ripple Labs Inc.\u2019s overture to purchase Circle Internet Financial for a reported $4 billion to $5 billion has ignited a rare public broadside from within the digital-asset industry itself, while simultaneously spotlighting diverging philosophies about how crypto networks should be commercialized. Simon Dedic, chief executive of the venture firm Moonrock Capital, took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,4,5],"class_list":["post-24915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-crypto","tag-doge","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dogewisperer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}