XRP has seen its market value explode by nearly fiverfold since the global magazine Forbes published a report dismissing XRP’s relevance in the financial space.
Eight months ago, in March, Forbes published a scathing report on XRP and Ripple, labeling them as “zombie projects” of little value.
The report focused on cryptocurrency ventures with billion-dollar valuations, particularly in light of Bitcoin’s resurgence. However, XRP and Ripple were singled out for detailed scrutiny.
Forbes’ Attacks on Ripple and XRP
Forbes explored Ripple’s history, emphasizing its original goal of creating a transformative global financial standard for banks by providing fast and low-cost money transfers. The report erroneously claimed Ripple’s leadership created 100 billion XRP tokens and sold $1.4 billion to fund its ambitious plans.
Additionally, the analysis discussed the widespread belief that Ripple could eventually surpass SWIFT, which handles over $5 trillion in daily interbank transfers. However, Forbes argued that, over a decade later, Ripple had made little progress toward this goal, with the company still running limited pilot programs with central banks.
In this context, the publication criticized Ripple for “failing” to meet its core objectives and labeled it a “crypto zombie.”
According to Forbes, despite Ripple’s “setbacks,” XRP continued to have a market capitalization of several billion dollars—$36 billion—at the time, ranking as the sixth most valuable cryptocurrency. Forbes also argued that XRP’s heavy daily trading volume of over $2 billion was driven more by speculation than any real-world utility.
Notably, Forbes extended its “zombie” and “good-for-nothing” labels to other blockchain projects. It identified at least 50 crypto platforms valued at over $1 billion, with 20 of them categorized as “functional zombies.”
While Forbes made a deliberate attempt to divert global investors’ attention from these crypto assets with its heavy criticism, investor interest in these projects soared even further.
XRP Price Explodes After Forbes Report
At the time of the publication, the price of XRP hovered around $0.60, with a market cap of $36 billion. This valuation even dipped by around 37% a few months later. However, today, XRP has made a stunning comeback that the market continues to discuss.
In particular, XRP has added over $120 billion to its market cap since Forbes’ publication. Its price has reached $2.86, with a 450% growth in the last 30 days.
Notably, 19 other tokens that Forbes disparaged in the report have also seen major boosts in their price performance since. This impressive turnaround has triggered criticisms around Forbes, as its negative narrative failed to hinder the tokens’ progress.
Notably, other industry commentators, like Jim Cramer, have also been subjects of ridicule in the crypto community as the market continues to grow, defying their harsh criticism. For instance, in January last year, XRP posted a 40% gain after Cramer called it a “giant con” asset. When factoring in today’s price, XRP has seen nearly a 9X surge since Cramer’s criticism.
