Meme coins – the fun, chaotic side of crypto that once drove wild rallies and viral moments – seem to have lost their spark. Reddit and X is filled with talk of “the meme era being over” and even few analysts believe they’re not a worthy investment anymore. But is it really the end, or …
What gives XRP its value? In an exchange on X, Ripple CTO David Schwartz – known as “JoelKatz” – tried to answer that question without pretending crypto already behaves like traditional assets. He didn’t lean on marketing language about instant settlement or global payments. He talked about power, control, censorship, incentive design, and speculation. How Does XRP Get Its Value? First, Schwartz reframed what XRP is actually for. He argued that the XRP Ledger is built for people and institutions that don’t want an intermediary sitting in the middle of their transactions. He put it in blunt terms: “Do you want to use a blockchain where people can be their own bank and no middlemen tax their transactions or do you want to be someone else’s bank and tax their transactions? If you want the latter, there are dozens of blockchains for you. If you want the former, there’s XRP.” In that framing, XRP is not just another token. It’s the only counterparty-free asset native to XRPL. Everything else on the ledger is an IOU from someone – a promise by an issuer, bank, fintech, money transmitter, or gateway. XRP is the exception. It exists on-ledger, without an issuer, and can move between any accounts without anyone else’s permission, freeze authority, or seizure authority. Related Reading: High Liquidity At This Level Could Send The XRP Price Surging Soon Schwartz made that explicit: “XRP is the only asset without a counterparty that can be accessed by every account in every jurisdiction with no risk of default, freeze, or clawback.” That point is central to how Ripple has always positioned XRP: the ledger is multi-currency, but only one asset on it is universally clean. What Schwartz is arguing is that this special status is not cosmetic. It is economic. He said: “I do think XRP’s special place on XRPL ensures that XRP will capture some of the value XRPL transactions generate.” To understand that claim, you have to understand how most blockchains try to “capture value.” The dominant 2020–2025 playbook in crypto is explicit extraction. Protocols design fee switches, burn mechanisms, staking capture, MEV capture, sequencer rent, or other tolls, and then say to the market: holding this token entitles you to a share of that toll. Schwartz is openly saying XRPL is not built like that. The XRP Ledger was not designed to tax users at the protocol layer. In his view, that’s a feature, not a bug. He described XRPL as a public good, not a rent machine. He explained it by analogy: “When you ask what eBay is good for, you normally don’t think about it being a good way to enrich the people who invest in eBay. You think of it as a way of bringing buyers and sellers together with the buyers and sellers wanting the costs to be as low as possible. The buyers and sellers shouldn’t want eBay’s investors taxing their transactions as much as they can get away with because that is mostly money the buyers have to pay but sellers don’t get.” Then he applied that logic directly to XRPL: “I think of XRPL as a public good that doesn’t tax people who want to use its capabilities. I am not arguing that it is the best design or even that it’s better than most other designs. But it is different. XRP really is about being your own bank and having no middlemen passively taxing your transactions.” XRP Price Is Driven By Speculation This is where the philosophical tension becomes an economic tension. If XRPL is designed not to skim value from users, then how does XRP appreciate? Why should holding XRP benefit from the ledger’s success? Schwartz’s answer is that XRP’s role as the only universal, non-freezable settlement asset on XRPL is itself enough to force some level of demand if XRPL becomes important infrastructure. In other words, the ledger doesn’t have to tax flow in order for XRP to matter. XRP matters if the ledger matters. But Schwartz did not pretend that this mechanism is currently driving price on its own. In fact, he went in the opposite direction and said something most executives in crypto either won’t admit or can’t afford to say in public. He said the market is still pricing the future, not the present: “The funny thing is that I think that most of the value of most cryptocurrencies comes from expected future speculation. So if what you care about future price changes, what people think will happen is much more important than what has happened.” Related Reading: XRP Chart Mirrors Gold Right Before Its Parabolic Run Then he pointed at bitcoin to make the point unavoidable: “Look at bitcoin. Most of the current investment thesis is something like, ‘Imagine if most companies start storing 1% of their treasury in bitcoin, what will that do to the price?’. What that’s saying is that in the future, more people will speculate on future price appreciation than speculate currently.” And he went even further: “It’s not even based on expected future utility, it’s based on expected future speculation! I want to believe utility matters, I really do.” That last line is probably the most revealing thing Schwartz said. He is not saying “XRP price today is purely a function of measurable payment volume today.” He’s saying that’s not how crypto is priced, period. Crypto, in his view, is reflexive: people buy because they believe other people will one day buy for the same reason, at higher size and higher urgency. That leads to the next objection: if value is driven by expectation of an “explosion scenario,” shouldn’t tokens be basically worthless until that scenario actually hits scale? Schwartz rejected that. He argued that markets continuously reprice probability, not outcomes: “There may come a day when we look at today’s cryptocurrency values as, in comparison, nothing. But the idea that values will be very low and then suddenly rise is just not how speculation works. As the probability of explosion or size of expected explosion grows, value follows.” At press time, XRP traded at $2.48. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
For more than a decade, October has been one of Bitcoin’s easiest months to be bullish. Historically, it has delivered average gains of about 22.5%, helped by post-summer liquidity, year-end portfolio positioning, and, more recently, steady demand from US investment products. As a result, confidence in that pattern was high again this year. And true […]
The post Here is why Bitcoin registered its first red October in 7 years appeared first on CryptoSlate.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong surprised everyone during the company’s Q3 earnings call, turning an ordinary update into an unexpected win for prediction market traders. Brian Armstrong’s Funny “Alpha Drop” on Prediction Markets During the Coinbase Q3 earnings call, Armstrong noticed that traders were betting on whether he’d mention certain crypto buzzwords like Bitcoin, Ethereum, staking, …
After launching, the U.S. spot Solana ETFs recorded strong inflows. By the third day of trading, both Grayscale and Bitwise confirmed growing market adoption. Listed on NYSE Arca and Nasdaq, these funds give investors an easy way to gain exposure to Solana while benefiting from features like staking rewards and lower fees. Bitwise BSOL ETF …
The crypto industry’s most aggressive anti-crime task force just crossed another milestone.
The Singapore liquidators are seeking to recover assets stolen from Multichain, including $63 million worth of USDC.
A new prediction circulating online claims that Pi Coin could reach $3 soon. However, in reality, such a price surge seems unlikely when the token is currently struggling near $0.2447.. Pi Coin Price Range Outlook Some experts, such as Dr. Altcoin, remain bullish, believing that Pi could rise over the next five years much like …
The Australian Federal Police cracked a coded crypto wallet backup holding $5.9 million after a data scientist deciphered a complex numerical sequence on a phone.
“Uptober” has turned into a red month for Bitcoin, with Fed rate cut hopes and easing US-China trade tensions doing little to uphold BTC prices.
The disgraced FTX founder resurfaced on social media with a sprawling self-defense arguing that customers could have been made whole in 2022.
Strong bitcoin mining performance and data center expansion drive momentum.
Solana (SOL) price is inching closer to the crucial $180 mark, igniting speculation that a breakout toward $200 could be on the horizon. After weeks of steady gains and surging network activity, traders are debating whether this rally signals the start of a new leg higher—or the calm before a reversal. With bullish momentum building …
AllUnity’s euro-pegged MiCA-compliant stablecoin, EURAU, is expanding across major blockchains using Chainlink’s CCIP protocol.
The Shiba Inu open interest has been one of the worst-performing among the top cryptocurrencies by market cap in the year 2025. While there has been a general increase in open interest across the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, pulling the market up with them, Shiba Inu has not followed this trajectory. Instead, the meme coin’s open interest has crashed significantly, making new 2025 lows in the process. Shiba Inu Open Interest Crashes Below $100 Million At the start of the year, on January 16, 2025, the Shiba Inu open interest had hit a new all-time high above $519 million despite the SHIB price action remaining relatively muted. It wasn’t long until the open interest began to decline, and it has been mostly downhill from there since. Related Reading: Dogecoin Price Resurrection To $0.5 Could Be Imminent If This Level Breaks By the start of February 2025, the Shiba Inu open interest had crashed by more than 50%, recording one of the sharpest declines in the market. However, the open interest had managed to stay above the 2024 lows as the SHIB price fluctuations kept traders interested. Now, however, the majority of the open interest that was seen in Shiba Inu at the start of the year is almost completely gone. Data from the Coinglass website shows that the open interest has now fallen below $100 million for the first time in 2025, marking a new yearly low. The current average of around $89 million translates to an over 80% decline in the last 9 months, painting a similar picture to the alt coin’s price, which is down 88% from its 2021 all-time highs. As this decline continues, it continues to impact the price, affecting its ability to stage a meaningful recovery. SHIB Could Be At A Pivotal Point As mentioned above, the last time that the Shiba Inu open interest was this low was back in 2024, but the interesting thing is that periods of low interest have often preceded some of the biggest moves. Back in August 2024, the Shiba Inu open interest had fallen to its lowest levels since 2023, but the next three months would see a rapid increase in both interest and price. Related Reading: Evernorth Has Reached 95% Of Its XRP Treasury Target – Here Are The Numbers Times of low interest, such as these, have often been breeding grounds for accumulation ahead of the next move. Thus, the Shiba Inu open interest dropping to yearly lows could be setting the stage for another price rally. Featured image from, chart from Tradingview.com
EU's ProtectEU mandates on-device scanning before encryption, creating a two-tier security system where states encrypt while citizens are surveilled. Digital feudalism codified.
As of October 31, 2025, Chainlink (LINK) is trading near $17.05, down around 2.8% in the last 24 hours. The decline comes as broader crypto market momentum cools, with Bitcoin struggling to hold above $110,000. Despite this pullback, LINK remains one of the top-performing altcoins over the past quarter, posting a 30% gain in Q3 …
Bankman-Fried and his family have claimed that the FTX co-founder was wrongfully convicted, and are seeking clemency from President Trump.
Ripple, the company behind XRP, is once again turning heads, this time with its game-changing stablecoin RLUSD. Ripple President Monica Long recently said that the growing use of RLUSD in real-world payments shows “real impact,” not just hype. Her statement comes right before Ripple’s Swell 2025 event, where the company is expected to unveil major …
Spot Ether ETF inflows have surpassed Bitcoin ETFs during the third quarter of 2025, signaling dormant appetite for regulated altcoin investments.
Could Solana become the next Bitcoin-level success story? Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan thinks so, and his reason is simple yet powerful. He believes the blockchain is sitting at the center of one of crypto’s biggest upcoming booms, with two powerful forces driving its rise. But what exactly makes Solana so special, and why does Hougan …
The CEO's unexpected remarks highlight the growing intersection of corporate communications and prediction markets, impacting trader strategies.
The post Coinbase CEO turns earnings call into unexpected jackpot for prediction market traders appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
dYdX (DYDX), one of the leading decentralized cryptocurrency trading platforms in the industry, is reportedly preparing to enter the US market by the end of the year, following the recent shift in crypto policies by the Trump administration. dYdX Expands Amid Supportive Legislation In an interview with Reuters, Eddie Zhang, the president of dYdX, emphasized the importance of this move, stating that having a presence in the United States aligns with the platform’s future direction. Unlike centralized exchanges such as Coinbase (COIN) and Kraken, which act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, dYdX aims to eliminate the middleman, allowing users to transact directly on a blockchain network that underpins cryptocurrencies. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Path Ahead: 10 Indicators Converge For Market Surge, End-Of-2025 Projections The platform specializes in perpetual contracts, a form of derivative that enables traders to speculate on asset prices without ownership and without an expiration date, distinguishing it from traditional futures contracts. Since its inception, dYdX has surpassed $1.5 trillion in total trading volume. As part of its expansion strategy, dYdX plans to introduce spot trading for Solana (SOL) and other linked cryptocurrencies, potentially including XRP and Cardano (ADA), to US users by the end of the year. This move comes in the wake of President Donald Trump’s increased support for the cryptocurrency sector, which has led to the dismissal of numerous lawsuits against major crypto platforms and prompted financial regulators to develop specialized rules for digital assets. These new measures include Congress’s passage of the GENIUS Act earlier this year and the potential passage of the Market Structure Bill. Together, these measures address the industry’s call for a new framework that could boost adoption and growth of the broader digital asset ecosystem in the US. Trading Fees Slashed, Prospective Offerings Awaiting Guidance Upon its entry into the US market, Reuters reports that dYdX intends to reduce its trading fees significantly, with plans to cut them by as much as half, bringing them down to between 50 and 65 basis points. However, while perpetual contracts will not be available to US users immediately, Zhang expressed hope that regulators will eventually provide the necessary guidance for decentralized platforms to offer these products. Related Reading: Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum Dip Post Fed’s Rate Cut: What’s Next For Crypto? The US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) recently issued a joint statement indicating their willingness to consider allowing crypto perpetual contracts to trade across regulated platforms in the US, which could pave the way for dYdX’s future offerings. As of this writing, the platform’s native token, DYDX, is trading at approximately $0.30. However, the token has experienced a significant decline of nearly 68% over the past year, shedding about $1.43 billion in market cap value. Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com
Seventeen years ago, on October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin Whitepaper. This nine-page document laid out the foundation for a decentralized digital currency, revolutionizing how we think about money and freedom. What started as a small project has grown into a global financial movement. Today, Bitcoin is used worldwide, transforming industries and empowering …
Official Trump coin has been a headline driver lately, with a wild swing in price pushing traders to rethink their next moves. Just this week, TRUMP price leaped 36.17%, making waves amid broader crypto volatility. The latest drop of 2.11% in 24 hours seems modest compared to this sprint, but it hints that traders who …
October 31, 2025 06:53:03 UTC Peter Brandt Highlights the “Emotional Tug” of Holding Opposite Bitcoin Positions Veteran trader Peter Brandt shared an honest take on the mental challenge of trading, admitting it feels “intellectually and emotionally awkward” to hold contrary positions across different accounts. Brandt explained that while he’s a long-term Bitcoin investor, his swing …
According to new court filings, bankrupt crypto exchange FTX now holds around $136 billion in assets. The revelation has reignited debate about the company’s dramatic collapse and its controversial founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), who now insists that FTX “was never bankrupt.” FTX Bankruptcy Update 2025: FTX’s estate, which once faced an $8 billion shortfall, is …
Bitwise’s Matt Hougan said Solana has good odds of winning a larger share of the stablecoin and tokenization market.
A long-term moving average indicator offers hope to bitcoin bulls.
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) claims that FTX was never insolvent. When FTX filed for bankruptcy, the $8 billion in customer assets remained on the platform. Almost all customers have been or will be repaid between 119% and 143% of what they lost. Around 98% of creditors have already received 120%. After covering $8 billion in claims …