Young Hoon Kim — the social-media personality who styles himself as the “IQ 276” record holder — just gave the XRP crowd a fresh piece of rocket fuel. “I buy XRP from now on,” Kim wrote on X on Friday, in what appears to be his first straight-up XRP shoutout after days of near-constant Bitcoin evangelizing.
Why The XRP Endorsement Now?
And, yeah, the XRP Army did what it always does: it treated the post like a mini event. “The smartest man in the world is buying XRP,” one account, Gordon (@GordonGekko), replied — then immediately stapled the other big narrative of the day onto it: “XRP is now on Solana too. Is this the start of an XRP rally?”
That second line isn’t just vibes. Solana’s official account posted “BREAKING: XRP is coming to Solana,” pointing to a wrapped-asset setup that would let XRP trade and move inside Solana DeFi rails.
Hex Trust, which is positioning itself as issuer/custodian for the wrapped token (wXRP), says the product is designed to be 1:1 backed and redeemable for native XRP, using LayerZero’s OFT standard and launching “starting with Solana” (with more chains name-checked).
So Kim’s timing, intentional or not, landed right on top of a very convenient distribution channel: “XRP, but DeFi-ready.” If you’re an XRP holder who’s been watching Solana soak up memecoin liquidity and on-chain volume for the past year, that’s an easy story to forward to your group chat.
The funny part is Kim’s recent persona has leaned hard into Bitcoin-maxi prophecy. In the last week alone, he made dozens of Bitcoin posts via X. On December 7, he posted: “In my personal view, Bitcoin’s current price is just a temporary discount caused by what seems to be market manipulation. I think any such manipulation may disappear within a week, and then it could start accelerating toward a new ATH.”
Just a few days later, on December 10, he wrote: “My analysis suggests that Bitcoin may have set its bottom a few weeks ago, and we could now be entering a true supercycle.” One day later, he added: “”My analysis suggests that Bitcoin reaching 300K in early 2026 is a logical scenario.”
Yesterday, Kim posted: “Bitcoin looks ready to break every prediction ever written. The real bull run begins when people think it’s already over,” before adding today: “I think Bitcoin is the money of God” and “In my view, one of the fastest ways to get rich is to stack Bitcoin.”
So why the sudden XRP detour? No explanation yet, at least publicly.
There’s also the reality that Kim is, politely put, controversial. Korean coverage has described him as being reported as an “IQ 276” holder tied to mind-sports organizations, but the broader profile has drawn scrutiny and debate online, with questions about verifiability and sourcing trailing the “world’s highest IQ” framing.
Still, crypto doesn’t really wait for footnotes. A big claim, a big ticker, a hot comment section — and now an XRP-to-Solana headline to glue it together. That’s plenty for a one-day narrative.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.04.
