Charles Hoskinson was asked a straightforward question during a recent discussion: even if Ripple keeps all the business value for itself, does it not still benefit XRP holders when the headlines drive the price up during a bull market?
His answer was pointed and detailed. “You got to understand that they gave themselves somewhere between 70 to 80% of the supply,” Hoskinson said. “The game is make the headlines, make the price go up, sell the XRP to other people, and then use the cash to buy assets.”
Hoskinson’s position is that XRP holders do not have legal ownership of anything Ripple builds with the money it raises from selling XRP. The prime broker, the custody business, the treasury management platform, the acquisitions, all of that belongs to Ripple as a private company with independent investors and shareholders.
“XRP holders have no legal ownership of those assets,” he said. “They go to a centralised company. The XRP token doesn’t really have much to say or do with that. There are no staking rewards or other things connected to it.”
“It’s basically like Tether from that perspective. One company gets all the value and the holders get some instrument and some network, but they don’t actually get any price appreciation from that,” he said.
The Circular Economy Problem
Hoskinson contrasted this with what he described as a properly structured tokenomic model. Using Midnight and Hyperliquid as examples, he argued that in a well-designed system, network activity creates direct buy demand for the underlying token. The more the network is used, the more demand there is for the token. Value flows back to holders.
“There is nothing in the Ripple network that creates buy demand for the XRP token. Nothing,” he said. “Whereas you can do that with Hyperliquid and absolutely can do it in the app chain model.”
He pointed to the EOS situation as the historical precedent. Block One raised $4 billion building the EOS network, declared it had no fiduciary obligation to the ecosystem, retained the capital, and EOS holders were left with a token that went nowhere while the company’s treasury compounded.
The Bull Market Counterargument
The question put to Hoskinson acknowledged the obvious: in a bull market, headlines drive prices. XRP holders profit when price goes up regardless of the underlying structure.
Hoskinson did not deny that. His argument is about the longer-term structure rather than short-term price action. Ripple has been selling hundreds of millions to billions of dollars worth of XRP every year, as documented in SEC filings that formed the basis of the lawsuit. That selling is ongoing. The cash goes into Ripple the company, not back into XRP.
“When they do make revenue and profit, there is no buyback. The Ripple company is not going and buying back XRP. They sell the XRP,” he said.
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