Ripple-promoted cryptocurrency XRP is often touted as a game-changer for payments and cross-border transactions.
The CIO of crypto hedge fund Arca, however, has questioned the financial utility of XRP.
“XRP Has No Financial Utility”
Jeff Dorman, the CIO of Arca, has dismissively described XRP as a “meme coin.”
To back his assertion, the crypto hedge funder cited U.S. President Donald Trump’s meme coin, $TRUMP, as the perfect token to understand crypto valuations. Dorman noted that the $TRUMP token had only the “social” value upon its launch, as there were no cash flows, and users could not do anything with the token.
However, the game changed after the team behind the meme coin announced that President Trump is set to host an exclusive gala dinner at the Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C., for top $TRUMP holders on May 22. Dorman argues that the dinner feature added utility value to the Solana-based meme coin.
Meanwhile, he thinks XRP has no utility or financial value despite being one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. According to the Arca exec, XRP’s market cap has soared to around $150 billion, mainly due to social value.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for XRP. Dorman says XRP’s social value has become so big that the payments token may add utility due to Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin, Ripple USD (RLUSD), which was deployed on the company’s institution-focused XRP Ledger and Ethereum blockchain in December 2024.
“Social value is real, but quantifying that value is impossible. Utility value is a little easier to measure, but still hard. When a token is useful, you can estimate how much it’s worth to use, and therefore estimate demand,” Dorman explained.
XRP could also add financial value in the future through acquisitions, for instance, if Ripple purchases stablecoin issuer Circle. Reports late last month indicated that Ripple bid up to $5 billion as part of an attempted takeover of Circle, which was rejected as being too low.
Bitwise president Teddy Fusaro suggested at the time that Ripple could buy a lot of crypto companies if they wanted, as the company currently holds over $93 billion in XRP.
