So, XRP. It went up. Apparently. I noticed because Brenda in accounting, who’s taken to charting crypto like it’s a personality trait, announced it to the breakroom with the enthusiasm usually reserved for winning lottery tickets. She said it was up 8%, hitting $1.50. The S&P 500 was also up, which, honestly, feels like a statistical anomaly. It’s like finding a matching sock. You briefly celebrate, then remember the sheer volume of lost socks and descend into a quiet despair.
A Flight to Safety (or Just Panic?)
Brenda, of course, framed it as a “flight to safety.” As if anyone views crypto as safe. Bitcoin, she explained, is now a “hedge against global uncertainty.” I pictured Bitcoin wearing a tiny hedge, pruning itself with miniature shears. The war in Iran, apparently, is good for Bitcoin. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d type. Stocks, meanwhile, are down. It’s all very… cyclical. Like my aunt’s insistence on re-gifting fruitcake.
Ripple and Mastercard: A Partnership (and My Skepticism)
There’s also this thing with Ripple and Mastercard. Ripple, the company behind XRP, is part of Mastercard’s Crypto Partner Program. Eighty-five companies, apparently. It’s all about cross-border payments and business-to-business settlements. Which sounds… complicated. I tried to explain it to my father, and he just asked if it involved carrier pigeons. He’s not wrong, really. It all feels rather archaic, just with more blinking lights.
Still, XRP is down 60% from its peak last July. Which, let’s be honest, is par for the course. Ripple can land all the partnerships it wants, but the connection to the actual token… well, it’s tenuous. Banks can use Ripple’s tech without ever touching XRP. It’s like buying a fancy new blender and then continuing to use a fork to mash potatoes. The logic escapes me. I suspect it escapes a lot of people. And that, I think, is the real story here. Not the price, not the partnerships, but the quiet disconnect between what’s being sold and what’s actually delivered. It’s a feeling I know well. It’s called Monday.
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2026-03-17 01:03