Chainlink Community Lead Slams Ripple-Kansas Deal, Calls XRP 'Bank-Themed Memecoin'

Ripple’s landmark five-year sports sponsorship with the University of Kansas may have delighted $XRP enthusiasts, but not everyone within the cryptocurrency community is buying the hype.

Zach Rynes, who is widely known as the Chainlink community lead, took to social media to slam what he perceives as a rather desperate marketing stunt.

He believes that there is a disconnect between Ripple’s corporate actions and the retail investors holding its native token.

As reported by U.Today, Ripple recently announced that the $XRP logo will be prominently featured on the uniforms of the Kansas Jayhawks' football and basketball programs.

In response to the announcement, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse celebrated it as a "rare moment where my professional and personal worlds collide."

Sponsoring sports vs. selling software

According to Rynes, a sports marketing campaign focused on retail investors would be entirely illogical for a company that ostensibly offers payments software to institutions.

"Sponsoring a college sports program with the $XRP logo on the jersey doesn’t make much sense if you think Ripple’s primary business is selling financial technology to banks," Rynes asserted.

Instead, the Chainlink community lead posited that the marketing push is meant to appease the retail buyers of the "bank-themed meme coin." "But it makes perfect sense when you understand Ripple is really in the business of selling a premined, bank-themed memecoin to retail," he stated.

Rynes further claims that Ripple uses its massive escrow holdings of $XRP to enrich its internal equity holders.

According to Rynes, Ripple executes these "coins they sell to fund corporate acquisitions and equity buybacks of Ripple Labs stock, building enterprise value for the sole benefit of shareholders at the direct expense of token holders."

He further claimed that the firm’s software delivery and other operational units pale in comparison to the revenue generated by unloading tokens onto the open market. "Ripple’s private round valuations are tied to the treasury value of their zero cost basis $XRP stash and their ability to extract from it for shareholders, every other business line is a rounding error in comparison," Rynes added.

At the same time, some $XRP fans pushed back against the critique by pointing out that LINK is currently sitting in 20th place on CoinMarketCap after previously being viewed as one of the top altcoin competitors.