Ran Neu-Ner, the host of CNBC’s “Crypto Trader” show, once one of XRP’s harshest critics, now says: “At this rate XRP will be in the number 1 spot by Friday.”

On Monday (19 November 2018), probably the worst day for the crypto market this year with Bitcoin (below $5000 for the first time since October 2017), Ether, and Bitcoin Cash losing around 14%, 14%, and 43% respectively (in the past 24-hour period) and the rest of the major cryptocurrencies (excluding stablecoins such as Tether) not doing much better, there was much despair and gloom to be found.

However, there was one ray of hope, one major cryptocurrency that remained strong, one whose fans’ strong belief for its fundamentals was showing the rest of the crypto community the true meaning of HODL: XRP. The second most valuable cryptocurrency was almost behaving like a stablecoin. Here is the one-day price chart from CryptoCompare:

XRP One Day Chart for 20 Nov 2018.png

At press time (06:50 UTC), according to data from CryptoCompare, XRP is trading at $0.4840, up 0.35% in the past 24-hour period.

And XRP’s strong performance is starting to be noticed.

Ran, who is the host of CNBC Africa’s “Crypto Trader” show, used to be one of XRP’s harshest critics. On 17 May 2018, while appearing as a guest on CNBC’s “Fast Money” show, Ran recommended selling XRP. Here is how he expressed his opinion about XRP:

“I'm throwing it in the garbage… I can't find a use case for the token… I'm out.”

However, over the past six months, as he has learnt more about Ripple and XRP (perhaps, partly due to conversations with Ripple employees, such as CTO David Schwartz, and famous XRP fans such as Michael Arrington, the co-founder of digital asset management firm Arrington XRP Capital), hate seems to have gradually turned into love.

Last Saturday (November 17th), as covered here, Ran made a comment on Twitter that may have started as a joke, but now in retrospect seems like one of the greatest pieces of advice he has ever offered:

And yesterday, Ran made a claim that must have sounded like music to every XRP HODLer’s ears:

Less than an hour later, he finally admitted for the first time how wrong he had been in the past about XRP, and expressed his regret with the following tweet:

Yesterday, Ran was not the only one impressed by XRP’s resilience. For example, here is a tweet by rating agency Weiss Ratings:

Well-known crypto trader/investor Richard Heart, who has never been a big fan of XRP, had this to say: