James Wynn dives into XRP, calling it the future of banking

Crypto trader James Wynn has revealed that he is committing a large portion of his portfolio to XRP, the digital asset associated with Ripple Labs. Wynn, who gained prominence for turning a small meme coin bet into a multimillion-dollar fortune, said he believes XRP could “revolutionize the banking systems.”

On Friday, Wynn posted on X that he had spent the previous 24 hours “going down the rabbit hole” of XRP and decided to invest a significant portion of his funds into the token. The trader encouraged his followers to educate him on both the pros and cons of the investment as part of his ongoing learning process in crypto.

“Whether you are Team XRP or not, I want everyone to educate me on pros and cons,” he wrote.

Whale trader James Wynn takes a chance at XRP 

Wynn became widely popular in the crypto community back in 2023 after turning a $7,600 investment in memecoin PEPE into an estimated $25 million. The profit spree established his reputation as one of the early meme coin success stories that has inspired hundreds of thousands to follow his X account.

After his PEPE success, Wynn’s trading activities have all been tracked by several crypto data platforms that share screenshots of his multimillion-dollar leverage positions and volatile swings in profit and loss. 

In March, Wynn began trading perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, a decentralized derivatives exchange for trading digital assets with high leverage. Viewers could track his trades in real time as he built a reputation for executing leveraged bets, at times clocking positions up to 40 times his initial margin.

During this period, Wynn reportedly held long Bitcoin positions valued at $1.25 billion. His account, which started with a few million dollars, soared to more than $87 million in profit before market volatility took back the profits he made. By his own account, he ended his Hyperliquid trading spree with losses of roughly $13 million.

During the end of 2025’s first half, Wynn announced that he was retiring from perpetual trading, describing the experience as thrilling but exhausting. “The perps casino was fun,” he wrote on X, adding that he had “zero regrets” despite the outcome.

However, on October 15, Wynn resurfaced, declaring he was “back with a vengeance, and coming to get what’s rightly mine.” Shortly afterward, he deposited nearly $200,000 into Hyperliquid and resumed trading.

After getting completely liquidated, James Wynn(@JamesWynnReal) reopened a 10x long on $PEPE — but less than 6 hours later, he got partially liquidated again! 😬

Remaining position: 39.2M $kPEPE($271K)https://t.co/WrQWvRKTQ3 pic.twitter.com/tbrln4If61

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) October 17, 2025

Among his new positions were Bitcoin longs worth $3.8 million at 40x cross-margin leverage, along with long positions in Ether and PEPE at 25x and 10x leverage, respectively. However, his timing could not have been worse, as the crypto markets entered another downturn, and Wynn found himself nearly $5 million down within a single day, Cryptopolitan reported.

Moving on to the next chapter

Following his recent losses, Wynn said he was taking a new direction and would be partaking in entrepreneurship within the crypto industry. Writing a brief statement on X late Friday, he surmised that he was finished with speculative trading and memecoins and intends to “build valuable products and services” instead.

“Meme coins: completed it. Perpetual trading: completed it. I’m going into business. I’m going to build in the crypto industry. That’s my true passion, building valuable products or services that generate big money and scaling that up to be the best product within whatever niche I decide to conquer. Then build the next,” the well-known trader reckoned.

Wynn’s renewed interest in XRP and market participation comes at a time when crypto markets are trying to find a way back to their start of “Uptober” highs.

October, one of Bitcoin’s strongest months historically, has been defined by forced selling and false starts. Analysts say it is on track to become the weakest October since 2015, despite the month’s long-standing average return of more than 25%.

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