A blockchain researcher says a potential fork of the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap will likely struggle to gain traction.
An influencer named Crypto Bitlord is trying to mobilize his 102,000 followers on Twitter into creating a fork of the open-source digital asset.
Although anyone can fork XRP in the same way Bitcoin has been forked many times over, a blockchain researcher at consulting firm Aykesubir tells Cointelegraph the effort is a major long shot.
And even if Bitlord successfully launches the new crypto asset, Eyal Shani says the hard part is convincing people to power the network and get exchanges to support the coin.
“You can just take their source code and start your own chain, the only problem is whether you can convince the Ripple validators to convert to your chain.”
The chief crypto analyst at Weiss Ratings, Juan M. Villaverde, also has his doubts. He says the fact that supporters of the fork haven’t been able to push up the price of XRP speaks volumes.
“Fact of the matter is these folks don’t have enough purchasing power to support the market price of the current XRP token, there’s no reason to believe they’d fare any better by simply forking the XRP ledger.”
Bitlord has vowed to launch the new token in less than two months if Ripple doesn’t stop selling portions of its XRP holdings to crypto exchanges and institutions.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse says the sales are used to support the XRP ecosystem and don’t affect the price, while CTO David Schultz says people hoping the company will leave XRP alone will be “massively” disappointed.
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