Young Hoon Kim — a social media personality who bills himself as the record-breaking “IQ 276” — just gave the XRP crowd a fresh shot of rocket fuel. “I’m buying XRP from now on,” Kim wrote at X on Friday, in what appears to be his first direct XRP shoutout after days of almost non-stop Bitcoin evangelism.
I’m buying #XRP from now on.
— Youun kim, iq 276 (@yhbryankimi) December 12, 2025
Why XRP support now?
And, yes, the XRP Army did what they always do: treated the post as a small event. “The smartest man in the world is buying XRP,” responded one account, Gordon (@GordonGekko), — then immediately connected to the day’s second big story: “XRP is now on Solana too. Is this the start of an XRP recovery?”
That second line isn’t just vibrations. Solanine published official account “AWESOME: XRP is coming to Solana,” pointing to a wrapped asset setup that would allow XRP to trade and move within the Solana DeFi rails.
Hex Trust, which positions itself as an issuer/custodian for the wrapped token (wXRP), says the product is designed to be 1:1 backed and redeemable for native XRP, using the LayerZero OFT standard and launching “starting with Solana” (multi-chain with name verification).
Related reading
So Kim’s timing, whether intentional or not, landed right on top of a very handy distribution channel: “XRP, but ready for DeFi.” If you’re an XRP owner who’s watched Solana soak up memecoin liquidity and on-chain volume over the past year, that’s an easy story to pass on to your group chat.
The funny thing is that Kim’s recent persona relied heavily on the Bitcoin-maxi prophecy. In the past week alone, he has published dozens of posts about Bitcoin via X. On December 7, he posted: “In my personal opinion, the current price of Bitcoin is just a temporary discount caused by what appears to be market manipulation. I think any such manipulation could disappear within a week, and then it could start accelerating towards a new ATH.”
Just days later, on December 10, he wrote: “My analysis suggests that Bitcoin may have bottomed out a few weeks ago, and now we could be entering a true supercycle.” A day later, he added: “My analysis suggests that reaching 300K Bitcoin in early 2026 is a logical scenario.”
Related reading
Yesterday, Kim posted: “Bitcoin looks poised to shatter every prediction ever written. The real bull run starts when people think it’s over,” before adding today: “I think Bitcoin is God’s money” and “In my opinion, one of the fastest ways to get rich is to hoard Bitcoin.”
So why the sudden XRP turn? There is no explanation yet, at least publicly.
There is also the fact that Kim is, to put it politely, controversial. Korean reporting described him as having a reported “IQ 276” associated with mind sports organizations, but the wider profile has sparked attention and debate online, with questions about verifiability and sources following the “world’s highest IQ” framework.
Crypto doesn’t really wait for footnotes, though. A big claim, a big ticker, a hot comment section — and now an XRP-to-Solana headline to put it together. That’s enough for one day’s story.
At press time, XRP was trading at $2.04.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
