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The great AmEx partnership with XRP that wasn’t

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The great AmEx partnership with XRP that wasn’t

For months, XRP influencers on X and YouTube have been promising their followers that American Express (AmEx) was about to embrace XRP. The longawaited announcement finally arrived on March 30. 

Turns out, the NFL sponsorship deal with the credit card giant had nothing to do with XRP. Yesterday, AmEx became the Official Payments Partner of the NFL, i.e., for presale tickets, on-site experiences, and game perks. 

Not a single mention of Ripple or its blockchain.

The hype had been building for months and reached a crescendo in the hours before the announcement.

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The same false promise has resurged in viral waves for years.

A years-long pattern of recycled hype

XRP influencers have forecasted AmEx’s use of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) an embarrassing number of times.

Months and even years ago, influencers claimed it was “a done deal” with AmEx, attaching diagrams, conference videos, audio clips, and assortments of annotated screenshots.

In January 2025, a leader of the XRP Army told his followers that Garlinghouse had revealed a partnership with AmEx under a non-disclosure agreement. 

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In March 2025, another influencer posted that AmEx had confirmed manufacturing a crypto card with Ripple.

By July 2025, yet another XRP influencer cited an unattributed infographic claiming AmEx somehow uses XRPL.

On YouTube, dozens of videos promote the same false narrative. Creators repackaged old footage as breaking news.

What actually happened in 2017

The entire mythology traces back to one real event. In November 2017, AmEx and Ripple announced a pilot for cross-border business payments between the US and UK via RippleNet.

Critically, that pilot did not use the XRP coin. Ripple’s own executive told CNBC at the time, “The technology we have developed, it separated a connection from the cryptocurrency or the token.”

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AmEx could use Ripple to exchange value from one fiat currency to another, he explained, “without the need for any intermediate blockchain currency.” Treacher added that XRP “will come into play later on in the evolutionary dynamics and the other players.”

Read more: Here’s why Ripple XRP partnerships and MoUs often go nowhere

It never did. AmEx never expanded the pilot, adopted XRP, or pursued any deal with Ripple beyond 2017. AmEx has never confirmed any new XRP deal, and the more recent viral claims have been labeled fake and misleading.

Still, the AmEx rumor gained its inception then, and XRP influencers kept recycling it for years.

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The XRP engagement economy of nonexistent partnerships

XRP influencers have turned the gap between RippleNet partnerships and actual XRPL usage into a cottage industry. 

The pattern is consistent. Influencers cite details about a years-old blockchain pilot, conflate RippleNet with XRP token usage, add ‘breaking’ or ‘just in’ or emergency siren emojis, and collect effortless engagement on social media.

Worse, some posts promoted unrelated tokens alongside the AmEx fiction. One Binance Square user bundled the fake announcement with a promotion for an unrelated token that would allegedly benefit from the non-existent AmEx-XRPL deal.

Protos has previously documented hundreds of Ripple partnership announcements that generated minimal usage of XRP, from MoneyGram to Bhutan’s central bank.

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XRP is down 29% year to date. AmEx, meanwhile, is selling football tickets using regular dollars.

Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks. For more informed news, follow us on X, Bluesky, and Google News, or subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Valinor Raises $25M Seed Round to Bring Private Credit Onchain

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Valinor Raises $25M Seed Round to Bring Private Credit Onchain


The ex-Blackstone team wants to move beyond crypto-collateralized loans and into ‘real economy credit’ as the tokenized RWA sector continues to grow.

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Fidelity says Bitcoin’s Cycle Drawdown is the Mildest Yet

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Fidelity says Bitcoin’s Cycle Drawdown is the Mildest Yet

Bitcoin has declined by about 50% this market cycle, far less than in previous cycles, Fidelity Digital Assets said, adding this trend could continue over time. 

Bitcoin’s post-all-time-high drawdowns have historically been steep, at about 80% to 90%, but this cycle has been about 50%, Fidelity Digital Assets research analyst Zack Wainwright said Tuesday.

One can see the “diminishing returns” that have developed from cycle to cycle when looking at Bitcoin’s price performance from the perspective of the previous all-time high, he said.

“Each cycle has been less dramatic to the upside than the previous,” he said. “Downside risk has been less dramatic in 2026, the current cycle, as well,” he added. 

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Bitcoin’s price hit its current cycle low of just over $60,000 on Feb. 6, a decline of 52% from its Oct. 6 all-time high of about $126,000, according to TradingView. It is currently down 46% from its peak six months ago. 

The previous cycle saw a much larger decline of 77%, from the 2021 all-time high of $69,000 to a bear market low just below $16,000 in November 2022. 

Bitcoin may bottom in late September

Fidelity’s assessment that this Bitcoin cycle is notably shallower than prior cycles “indicates a maturing market with reduced volatility and stronger institutional confidence,” Nick Ruck, director of LVRG Research, told Cointelegraph on Wednesday. 

“This shift signals that Bitcoin is changing from a speculative asset toward a more stable store of value, potentially paving the way for greater adoption in the future.”

Related: Bitcoin’s $10K range expected to hold until spot traders show up: Data

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Meanwhile, Alphractal founder Joao Wedson observed Tuesday that Bitcoin’s top occurred 534 days after the last halving, a shorter span than in the previous cycle.

This “decaying pattern” across cycles suggests the historical bottom may occur between 912 and 922 days after the halving, which “points to a bottom in late September or early October 2026,” he said. 

BTC is below key daily moving averages 

Bitcoin remains below the key 50-day and 200-day exponential moving averages, two long-term trend indicators. 

It is hovering at the 200-week EMA, around $68,000, which has served as a key level of support during previous market downturns. 

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BTC remains below key daily moving averages. Source: TradingView

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