- Pano Mekras says XRP should be viewed as a decentralized commodity, not a banking-first asset.
- He points to XRPL’s original goal of removing financial middlemen from value transfer.
- He argues Ripple’s bank-focused strategy does not redefine XRP itself.
Anodos Finance CEO Pano Mekras is pushing XRP back toward its original identity, arguing that the asset should not be framed mainly as a tool for banks. In a recent post, he says XRP should return to “its original vision” and stop being sold as something that helps institutions and sees it as “a decentralized commodity that lives on a democratic network.”
The post is reopening a familiar debate inside the XRP community. One side emphasizes Ripple’s institutional payments strategy. The other argues that this narrative has moved too far from what the XRP Ledger was originally built to do.
Mekras Pushes XRP Back To Its Roots
Mekras says XRP “should return to the original vision” and rejects the idea that the asset should primarily serve institutional finance. He argues that XRP’s identity is being narrowed into a “banking tool” even though the ledger was designed with a broader purpose.
He says, “XRP wasn’t built for banks. It was built to kill them.” His broader argument is that XRP should be understood as open financial infrastructure rather than a product tailored mainly for enterprise adoption.
XRPL Founders Aimed to Remove Middlemen
Mekras ties his argument to XRP Ledger’s earliest design principles. In that framing, XRPL was meant to support peer-to-peer value exchange without relying on financial gatekeepers. He points to the genesis period in 2011 and 2012 and highlights “Disintermediation as Mission” as the core idea behind the project.
He also references David Schwartz and the early founding team, including Jed McCaleb and Arthur Britto. A quote attributed to Schwartz in the material says: “The vision was clear: Architectural blueprint for a world where banks were no longer necessary.”
Mekras also cites Schwartz’s 2019 post about being unable to pay a tour guide due to a lifetime PayPal ban, which he says captures the original motivation behind the network.
Banking Strategy Does Not Redefine XRP
Mekras argues that Ripple’s turn toward banks was a strategy for adoption, not a rewrite of XRP’s core nature. In his view, XRP remains independent of Ripple even as the company builds enterprise-focused payment products around it.
That position is reviving a wider community split. Some XRP supporters continue to emphasize institutional integration as the clearest path to long-term value. Others argue that XRP’s decentralized exchange, tokenization features, and public-network design are being overshadowed by a narrative that focuses too heavily on banks.
Mekras is clearly placing himself in the second camp and urging the community to reclaim that original framing.
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