XRP Community Revives Amazon Acquisition Claims Following Ripple's Derivatives Market Expansion

Source: CryptoNewsNet Original Title: Pundit Revives Claims of Amazon Reportedly Bought 5B XRP After Recent Moves Original Link:

Background on Ripple and Bitnomial

Ripple has been increasing its involvement in the derivatives market, which has prompted XRP community members to revisit historical claims about Amazon’s alleged purchase of 5 billion XRP a decade ago.

This discussion resurfaced after Bitnomial announced the launch of Botanical, its CFTC-regulated perpetual futures trading platform, in October 2024. Ripple led a $25 million funding round for this launch. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse praised Bitnomial’s efforts to bring regulated offshore-style trading structures to the U.S. derivatives market, particularly for assets like XRP. He also noted that Bitnomial plans to use Ripple’s RLUSD for settlement, positioning this as raising industry standards.

The Revival of Controversial Claims

XRP commentator Cowboy recently highlighted these developments, which prompted Digital Asset Investor (DAI), another prominent community figure, to revisit claims made by Kendra Hill, a controversial XRP community member.

Hill became notable in the XRP community seven years ago when she started a Steemit blog in July 2017. She claimed insider knowledge and made several bullish predictions for XRP, including its future role in the global financial system. Years before the Bitnomial announcement, Hill argued that Ripple used cross-border payments as a testing phase before its real goal: managing transactions in the derivatives market through a system she called Codius.

When Ripple backed Bitnomial in 2024, some XRP holders, including DAI, believed Hill’s earlier predictions about Ripple’s derivatives ambitions may have been accurate.

The Amazon Claim

This led DAI to revisit Hill’s most controversial assertion: that Amazon secured a massive XRP position. According to Hill, Amazon and Ripple negotiated a deal in 2015 that gave Amazon control over 5 billion XRP—representing over 5% of XRP’s total supply. Hill claimed this XRP remained locked pending an official partnership announcement.

Hill’s explanation for why this deal remained quiet was that XRP’s price wouldn’t react to partnership announcements because the asset lacked real-world use cases at the time. She believed the price would surge once new applications emerged, and major partners preferred silence to allow institutional investors to accumulate XRP at lower prices.

To support Hill’s claims, DAI also referenced a comment from Ripple CTO David Schwartz made in October 2025. Schwartz explained that Ripple could sell rights to receive future escrowed XRP or even transfer the accounts that those escrows eventually unlock into, though the XRP itself couldn’t enter the market until its planned release date.

Important Caveats

Despite these discussions, neither Ripple, Amazon, nor any of their executives have confirmed that such a partnership ever existed. Notably, Hill’s track record includes failed predictions: she predicted an announcement would arrive in March 2019, which never happened. She also claimed in 2018 that XRP would reach $50 in 24 hours—another prediction that did not materialize.