Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch and CrunchBase, has placed XRP among his largest personal crypto holdings, according to a recent social post.

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He listed XRP as one of his top five positions by dollar value, alongside Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Immutable. The disclosure landed plenty of attention online and reignited debate about who is buying what and why.

Arrington’s Holdings And Community Reaction

Reports have disclosed that his post drew heavy engagement, with replies running the gamut from Bitcoin-only stances to more mixed portfolios.

Several industry figures echoed Arrington’s mix; Tony Edward, for example, listed XRP with BTC and ETH when discussing core positions.

The debate was loud and fast on social feeds. Some users framed the move as a vote of confidence. Others warned that one investor’s choices do not equal a market-wide shift.

Tell me your top five crypto holdings (by total dollar value).

Mine are XRP, BTC, ETH and IMX

— Michael Arrington (@arrington) December 13, 2025

Institutional Moves Follow

Based on reports, Arrington’s public support is tied to direct institutional activity. In October, Arrington Capital joined Ripple and SBI Holdings to back an initiative by Evernorth aimed at building a large institutional XRP treasury.

The project, which has been described in some circles as among the biggest of its kind, aims to increase institutional use of XRP and to support on-ledger activity such as decentralized finance and lending.

That involvement means Arrington is more than a vocal supporter; he is also tied to projects that could change how institutions use the token.

XRP Market Moves And Key Figures

XRP’s market picture has been mixed. As of December 16, 2025, the token was trading around $1.98, having held in a roughly $2.00 to $2.20 band in recent sessions.

There was a small daily lift of about 1.2% to roughly $2.08 on Monday, which helped the token cover some ground after early-December weakness.

The year has seen bigger swings: XRP peaked near $3.65 in July before giving back some gains. Activity in regulated derivatives has also grown.

Reports point to XRP futures on the CME reaching a record open interest of roughly $3 billion in late October 2025, a figure that market watchers say reflects rising institutional appetite for regulated exposure.

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A Past Claim That No Longer Holds

Arrington has previously highlighted XRP’s strong performance. In March, he tweeted that XRP had been the best-performing major asset across multiple time frames — 90 days, 180 days, one year and three years.

That claim no longer lines up with current rankings. Performance metrics have shifted since then, and the statement has been overtaken by later results.

Featured image from Bitpanda Blog, chart from TradingView

The Ethereum system upgrade known as the Merge was executed about two weeks ago. And while things have been running smoothly, not everyone is impressed by the upgrade.

Cardano founder and CEO Charles Hoskinson is among them, telling TechCrunch he didn’t expect Ethereum’s design of Proof-of-Stake (PoS) to be “as rough as it is.”

Prior to the Merge, some crypto community members raised concerns about the PoS method, noting it felt more centralized than decentralized given that four major crypto entities control over half of all staked ETH.

“About 42% of the blocks after the Merge are held by two actors [Lido and Coinbase] and they’re indefinitely locked in Proof of Stake,” Hoskinson said.

Earlier this month, Hoskinson tweeted, “Ethereum is becoming the Hotel California of Crypto.” He said he still holds the view that the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap is like the hotel in the classic Eagles song.

“Ethereum has become the Hotel California of cryptocurrency. You can check in but you can’t check out and that’s just nuts because Cardano doesn’t have that,” Hoskinson said, nodding to his own blockchain. “About 74% of Cardano is staked but it’s liquid — you can move it any time you want. Our consensus method doesn’t require locking.”

Access to finance remains a key growth constraint for small businesses, with data showing a $330 billion financing deficit for the small enterprises that make up 90% of Africa’s businesses.

This is the gap that Kenya’s embedded finance fintech Pezesha seeks to bridge as it expands into Nigeria, Rwanda and Francophone Africa following a $11 million pre-Series A equity-debt round led by Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II with participation from Verdant Frontiers Fintech Fund, cFund and Cardano blockchain builder Input Output Global (IOG). The round also included a $5 million debt from Talanton and Verdant Capital Specialist Funds.

The fintech’s new growth strategy follows its plan to power its embedded finance offering beyond its current markets including Uganda and Ghana, to bridge the financing gap affecting millions of micro, small medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across these markets.

Founded in 2017 by Hilda Moraa, Pezesha has built a scalable digital lending infrastructure that allows both traditional and non-traditional finance institutions to offer working capital to MSMEs.

“The opportunity and impact in solving working capital problems for SMEs is huge. [We are] solving the root cause, which is information asymmetry issues, to ensure quality and responsible borrowing. Pezesha solves this through our robust API driven credit scoring technology,” Moraa, also the CEO, told TechCrunch.

The fintech works with partner companies such as Twiga and MarketForce, which integrate its credit scoring APIs in their platforms to enable their customers get real time loan offers.

Pezesha said it is currently working with over 20 partner companies that have enabled it to extend loans to over 100,000 businesses to date. It expects this number to grow before the end of the year as an additional 10 companies integrate with its infrastructure. The fintech is able to extend loans of up to $10,000 at single digit interest rates, and a repayment period of one year.

Pezesha plans to create a $100 million financing opportunity each year for businesses by tapping local and international banking institutions, high net-worth individuals and decentralized finance.

“We are building for the future and this means tapping new innovations for additional liquidity that allows us to offer affordable loans to SMEs,” said Moraa, a two-time founder, who started Pezesha after successfully exiting Weza Tele in 2015.

Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of IOG and Cardano, while commenting on their investment in Pezesha said in a statement that, “Facilitating the movement of capital into emerging markets to support economic growth and job creation is a core promise of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Our vision is centered on using technology to make it easier for people across the globe to borrow and lend to each other in a regulated way. This investment in Pezesha is an important milestone, and we’re excited to be a part of their growth story.”

The IOG’s investment into Pezesha follows an earlier announcement that the two companies had partnered to build a peer-to-peer financial operating system for Africa.

Moraa said that working with strategic partners like Cardano will open up the debt liquidity market and offer the affordable capital critical for the growth of all sectors of the economy.

The fintech plans to open up more lending opportunities for women entrepreneurs who continue to be locked out by the formal banking sector.

“Pezesha is dedicated to solving Africa’s working capital problem through its robust lending infrastructure, and this investment will allow them to deepen the range of financial products offering especially to women owned MSMEs,” said Christina “CJ” Juhasz, the chief investment officer of Women’s World Banking Asset Management.

Pezesha did not reveal how much it has raised in the past, but Moraa noted that 20% of its initial pre-seed investment in 2017 was from local angels. The fintech, which raised seven figures last year, counts Seedstarts, GreenHouse Capital and Consonance Investment Managers, among its several investors.

“We have the right business model, are profitable, and continue to pursue the kind of investors that are aligned with our goals and values,” Moraa said.

Despite announcing that Tesla had sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings in Q2, CEO Elon Musk disclosed in a quarterly investor call that the company also held Dogecoin and had not sold any of those holdings.

“We have not sold any of our Dogecoin; we still have it,” Musk said in the call.

Musk has detailed in the past that he personally owns Dogecoin but has not indicated that Tesla does, though the electric car company has been accepting Doge payments for some merchandise on their website. It’s unclear whether the company has simply been holding on to the tokens used for merch purchases or has made dedicated buys of the dog-themed “joke” cryptocurrency that Musk has repeatedly voiced his support for on Twitter.

The company disclosed that it currently owns $218 million worth of digital assets after selling $963 million worth of Bitcoin. The bulk of that $218 million is likely its remaining Bitcoin.

Tesla reportedly had around 42,000 Bitcoin heading into the second quarter, so after selling 75% of them, it should have had around 10,500 at the end of the quarter. Now, to determine exactly how much of that total holding is Bitcoin, we’d have to know exactly when the snapshot was taken. It was assumedly taken sometime the last day of June when fiscal Q2 ended, so 1 Bitcoin would have been trading for between $18,750 and $20,300 throughout the day, which at 10,500 coins would mean that around $197 million to $213 million of its total “digital assets” would be in Bitcoin.

That napkin math leaves a much smaller amount of room left for Dogecoin holdings, though perhaps still a healthy amount to have been made solely on merchandise sales. Tesla has not disclosed holding any major cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin and, now, Dogecoin.

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Those of you who bought Dogecoin as a joke can use them towards movie tickets at AMC. The largest movie theater chain in the U.S., AMC Theaters, has been openly pro-crypto, and the CEO recently announced its mobile app will now accept Dogecoin (DOGE), Shibu Inu (SHIB), and other cryptocurrencies.

The names of the other newly supported cryptocurrencies are yet to be revealed. TechCrunch has reached out for a comment and will update this if they get back to us.

In the tweet, Aron revealed that customers in the U.S. can update the latest version of the AMC Theatres iOS and Android mobile apps to use crypto payments via integration with BitPay.

Dogecoin was accepted by AMC Theaters in October 2021, but only through digital gift cards (up to $200 per day). Its plans to begin accepting crypto were announced in August, however, it wasn’t until January 6, 2022, when the CEO of AMC Theatres, Adam Aron, promised users via a tweet to include meme tokens DOGE and SHIB by March. While delayed, the company delivered, appeasing the impatient Dogecoin fans.

The company first started accepting crypto payments back in November, which allowed customers to purchase movie tickets online using Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Litecoin (LTC). After the announcement, social media erupted with Dogecoin fans demanding the meme cryptocurrency be accepted as well. Aron tweeted a poll, asking whether or not they would use DOGE to make purchases at AMC. More than two-thirds voted yes.

According to Aron, crypto payments accounted for 14% of total online transactions.

Paying for popcorn and tickets using DOGE is simple, for the most part. All you have to do is select Bitpay as your payment method once you have added your AMC tickets to your cart. Then you just connect your crypto wallet or get an address where you can send your chosen cryptocurrency.