Nicknamed “Funky”, Ben Askren is an American retired professional mixed martial artist who recently shared his anti-thought on XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency.
Askren is a former Olympic wrestler who also competed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Despite his sports expertise, Ben fell into a controversial argument against the XRP army by tweeting “XRP is a scam”. While responding to a tweet that tagged him, Askren replied;
As always it is, the tweet gained significant traction shortly, at the time of reporting this, Askren’s ‘XRP-related tweet” is popping up with 1.7K likes and 133 retweets. Also, the responses are a mish-mash of the XRP army and XRP haters. On one side, few comments are backing Askren’s claim, on the other side, others appeared as a strong adamant of XRP.
However, a twitter handle, ‘Yassin M’ who by his Twitter profile seems XRP army member backlashed by noting “XRP is about as a scam as you are a UFC Champion”. More so, another response embraced the way XRP works, it mentioned; “XRP is solving a global problem”. With this, the tweet laid down the significance of XRP by noting the quick settlement of the cross-border transaction of XRP.
On the other hand, Bitcoin believer mocks at the XRP army and quietly acknowledged the claim of Askren. A Twitter handle “John Kwoski” noted that ‘XRP is a scam” and continued;
Not a token meant to be held long term. Bitcoin is the best money in the world.
Echoing the similar concern, Steve Floyd who appeared as the founder and CEO of Fractals, indicators on a candlestick, noted;
A worthless centralized shit token with no utility none the less.
Not a First Time
Although this tweet looks fairly confrontational, certainly this isn’t the first time that Askren dared tweeting something about crypto. Back in October last year, Askren quietly shilled BTC, stating;
Just bought more BTC using eToro was really easy, now all of you Twitter geniuses can tell me Crypto is a scam while my assets go up!
However, few also were skeptical whether Askren really had a bullish view on Bitcoin or was promoting eToro as he specifically tagged eToro in his tweet. This being said, sponsorship wasn’t entirely the crux of the matter, he has been a big advocate of LTC. In fact, his UFC escapade had reportedly linked to Litecoin Foundation and had also been founded shilling LTC when it was traded at $100 during May 2019.
As for XRP, the token price didn’t have any relation with Askren’s anti-XRP tweet. At the time of reporting this, it is currently trading at $0.23 against USD, valuing the total market capitalization of $10,423,825,847. More so, the token is also soaring its value by 2.26 within 24Hrs.