Messari’s Research on XRP Lead to Problems Among the Community and Police Intervention

The cryptocurrency market is full of individuals that are very passionate about certain projects. XRP is one of these projects that received a lot of attention and support from the community. However, this is creating some problems in the space.

A few days ago, Messari released a report in which they inform that XRP’s market capitalization was, in fact, 47% lower than previously expected. As per this report, the cryptocurrency’s total market capitalization is $6.9 billion rather than $13 billion.

Researchers at Messari explain that Ripple has not shared any methodology or reference exchange data to calculate their trading volume.

In order to have these results, Messari explains that Jed McCaleb, the co-founder of Ripple, has 6.7 billion XRP locked that can be sold just in small fractions.

There are also 5.9 billion XRP committed but not donated to RippleWorks by Chris Larsen, the co-founder of Ripple. Furthermore, there are more than 6.6 billion XRP that have selling restrictions. This, combined with the 59 billion XRP held by Ripple clearly reduce the market capitalization of one of the most popular digital assets in the market. A summarized report can also be seen on Twitter:

🚨Exclusive report: We believe Ripple’s $XRP market cap is likely overstated by $6.1 billion based on inflated circulating supply numbers.

Read our summary and methodology: https://t.co/0zD5YUSTpV …

Newsletter subscribers can access the full report through that link.

— Messari (@MessariCrypto) January 24, 2019

A Ripple’s spokesperson reached CoinDesk regarding this issue. He explained that the report contains inaccurate assumptions related to lockups and selling restrictions.

“While decentralized digital assets like XRP are different from traditional equities, the term ‘market cap’ is always a very simple calculation: current price X total number of asset = market capitalization,” said Ripple’s spokesperson. “That puts XRP’s current market cap at approximately $31 billion. We believe that any other calculation of market capitalization for XRP is not a clear representation of the truth.”

Clearly, the Ripple and XRP community did not like this report and gave their opinion on social media. Ryan Selkis, the founder of Messari Crypto shared his report and started to receive threat calls.

Before releasing this report, he explained that they’ve emailed Ripple four times in just 48 hours prior to the publication of the research report. Nevertheless, they did not receive any answer on the matter.

On January 25, Ryan Selkis informed on Tiwtter that he received a call from a Nashville number and ‘recited’ his wife’s birthday. After it, the number hung up.

Someone just called me from a Nashville number and recited my wife’s birthday to me. Then hung up.@bgarlinghouse these are the type of animals you and your fucking company enable.

War.

— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) January 24, 2019

Ryan Selkis wrote another Tweet in which he said that he wants Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of the company, Monica Long, in charge of Marketing for Ripple, and other individuals working at Ripple to denounce XRP community threats against his family.

He went on explaining that he is going to be contacting the FBI and the local police after three calls that he received.

I want @Ripple @bgarlinghouse @MonicaLongSF @CoryTV @JoelKatz @warpaul to denounce any $xrp community threats against my family. I’m going to the fbi and local police after THREE calls. Ensuring our family doesn’t get swatted.

I’m not going home until it’s publicly stated.

— Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) January 25, 2019

The report released by Messari shows that the cryptocurrency market capitalization measure is currently creating several controversies among the crypto community.

There are different ways to measure the real value of a network, and the market cap is not necessarily the best way to do it.