Crypto Banter’s Ran Neuner says Ripple is ‘despicable,’ tips hat to ZachXBT: Hall of Flame

22 August 2023

Cointelegraph By Ciaran Lyons

Ran Neuner is the CEO of Onchain Capital, founder of Crypto Banter, and a vocal crypto commentator on X.

Crypto Banter‘s Ran Neuner has a “problem with the structure of XRP and Ripple.”

While he appreciates Ripple sticking it to the SEC, he is hung up on the “moral and ethical” side of things with Ripple.

He thinks Ripple is giving a bad deal to those holding XRP.

“Here is a centralized company that was selling tokens to fund the operations of a CENTRALIZED company for the benefit of the shareholders and not necessarily for the benefit of the tokenholders. I have an issue with that — morally and ethically.”

“Eventually, the shareholders are going to get dividends — it is despicable,” Neuner tells Magazine.

Neuner isn’t afraid to go against the norm and speak his mind. It is a trait that has helped him accumulate over 720,200 Twitter (now X) followers. Not that he’s bothered by follower numbers:

“To be honest, I don’t really care about the growth. I use Twitter as a platform to tell people what I think. It’s uncensored, unfiltered, and it’s not for everyone,” says Neuner.

Neuner serves as the CEO and co-founder of Onchain Capital, a crypto investment fund and consulting service. He also co-hosts a daily live broadcast on the Crypto Banter YouTube channel to hundreds of thousands of people.

Somehow, he still manages to also host a two-hour live Twitter Space session on a daily basis… and he has four children under the age of eight.

His kids know that dad is involved in the world of broadcasting and have picked up chart reading skills by osmosis.

“I woke up on Saturday, the market was all green, my son said, ‘Oh oh, all the bubbles are green, does that mean you have to go to work today?'”

Neuner says he started a Twitter account for work.

“I started my Twitter account when I started the first televised crypto show in the world [Crypto Trader] on CNBC. I needed a Twitter account. In the beginning, I had reasonably fast growth,” he tells Magazine.

Despite lacking a formal growth strategy, Neuner now sees a constant flow of followers thanks to his daily live broadcasts on YouTube and his regular sessions on Twitter Spaces.

“It is a great place to test your opinion, and it is a great outlet when I feel strongly about something. I rally people in the community.”

Neuner isn’t a fan of anonymous sleuth FatMan Terra.

“He hides behind an avatar, no one knows who he is… well, we know exactly who he is,” Neuner says.

FatMan Terra began investigating Neuner over his ties to Terraform Labs, shortly after its native token, LUNA, collapsed.

“He believes he can just spread misinformation to create narratives and stories about people,” says Neuner.

Neuner says that during a bear market, people are always looking for someone to blame, and FatMan Terra targeting influential people does “more damage than he thinks.”

“We get threats all the time because of his actions,” Neuner explains.

Neuner has had a wild ride with crypto scam investigator ZachXBT but admits that he is still a fan of him at the end of the day.

“Even in my worst times of being attacked by ZachXBT, I believe the service that ZachXBT does is a really valuable service in the community,” Neuner declares.

Neuner explains that he ended up in a mediation process with ZachXBT after the investigator accused him of pumping and dumping on his followers. Neuner was considering suing because of “the damage” he sustained.

“In the mediation, we showed him his tweets and allegations were wrong, and he was man enough to write a thread about it saying he is wrong.”

Most of his content is crypto-related and occasional veers into financial advice:

“90% of my tweets are crypto-related,” Neuner explains, adding that the other 10% is “complaining about bad culture.”

“I have a passion for good service. I have a complete dislike for getting bad service. So, I hate flying on any type of American airline. They don’t want your business.”

Neuner explains he much prefers to follow people whom he disagrees with.

“The more people you hate on your Twitter feed, the better your experience will be. This is because Twitter becomes an echo chamber, and markets love echo chambers. Surround yourself with people you don’t agree with — they will show you why you don’t agree with them.”

Adam Cochran and Cory Klippsten are a couple of good examples. Cochran “is a neurotic, hysterical person” who acts like everything is the end of the world.

Neuner “can’t stand reading his tweets” but forces himself to anyway. Klippsten, meanwhile, seems to think he is the chief Bitcoiner.

“He genuinely believes that he is the CEO of Bitcoin and has more of a share of Bitcoin than anyone else. I listen to him to understand what the Bitcoin Maxis are thinking.”

But there are accounts he follows for useful and insightful market commentary.

“If I want on-chain analysis, I’ll go to Dylan LeClair or Will Clemente,” Neuner says.

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Neuner thinks that the “raging bull markets” era is finished, blaming it on regulatory uncertainty.

“There is less money in because of regulation uncertainty, [so the next bull run] will not be as violent. We will have a slow, sustained market,” he says.

He hints that it might be wise to keep a close eye on Solana, Aptos, Sui and Ethereum as potential game changers. “It’s probably going to be one of them,” he says.

“If I was going to put my money on one of them, I’d say Sui over Aptos. I think technically, the people working there are better.”

Neuner explains the whole space is still waiting for that “one killer” application to get mass adoption for blockchain.

“If we get an app where we get 500 million retail people not knowing it is on a blockchain, whatever app that blockchain is written on, is going to fly to the moon,” he predicts.

“That could be the moment where overnight we see one go from $29 to $290,” Neuner adds.

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