Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch and investment partner at Arrington XRP Capital, recently said: “the tribalism in [the crypto] industry is insane … [such as] Bitcoin (BTC) maximalists … but everybody ‘agrees’ like XRP sucks … I don’t really get it … [Ripple Labs Inc] is a legitimate company. They don’t pretend to be something they’re not.”

Arrington added that Ripple company’s suite of financial products are “really goods at one thing, [which is] moving money fast and cheap. It’s fantastic [because] it fills a big need.”

“Nothing Better Than XRP”

The Uber, Airbnb, and Pinterest investor further noted that: 

For a hedge fund like us, to denominate in XRP … is really, really, really good. We did our first close [as] we moved [sic] $50 million into the company in like 2 seconds and it cost 30 cents. That is amazing. There’s no way to do that with fiat [currency] or bitcoin.

Michael Arrington

 Arrington continued: 

There’s just no [other] way to do it that fast and that cheaply. So, it serves a really useful need for us. Also, When our LPs have redeemed … hopefully never … but when they want some of the money back, we [can] just send it in XRP again. And, there is no three-day wait for international wires or one-day wait for US wires. We’re not paying wire fees.

Michael Arrington

Not That Hard “To Understand XRP”

Commenting on what he thinks is some unfair criticism of Ripple company’s products, Arrington said: “I don’t understand why that’s hard to understand” – meaning that it should be clear to everyone that the American fintech’s products actually work and they serve a useful purpose.

Arrington further noted: 

The religious wars aside, the tribalism aside, it does some things really well and we love it for that. That being said, just because we are denominated in XRP … I am not a special pleader for XRP. I don’t work for them. The company itself is not our LP. Other people who had XRP … are … I like them. I think they’re great, but they’re like less than 5% of our asset base at this point. We do invest in XRP, but most of our investments are in other things.

Michael Arrington

xRapid Goes Live, 81% Of Survey Respondents Prefer XRP

As CryptoGlobe covered on October 14th, Wirex, a zero-commission platform for buying, selling, and storing crypto assets and fiat currencies, had asked its followers on Twitter which cryptocurrency they would recommend for making everyday purchases.

Significantly, 81% of Wirex’s survey respondents said they would use XRP for purchasing good or services and only 10% of those surveyed preferred to use bitcoin (BTC).

Meanwhile, 6% of respondents said they would use litecoin (LTC) and only 3% preferred to use ethereum (ETH).

As CryptoGlobe covered on October 2nd, Ripple’s highly anticipated xRapid product recently went live. xRapid aims to “eliminate the need for a pre-funded nostro account when executing a cross-border payment”, and it “sources liquidity from XRP on exchanges around the world.”  According to Ripple, xRapid will allow for much faster cross-border transactions at a significantly lower cost.