XRP is in trouble following the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple.
BItstamp is the largest crypto exchange to have blocked US customers.
The third largest crypto exchange is struggling to keep up with these allegations.
The Trust Project is an international consortium of media Crypto Comeback Pro organisations based on transparency standards.
The popular exchange BItstamp has announced that it will halt XRP trading for US customers. This follows an announcement by the SEC that the regulator is pursuing a lawsuit against Ripple Labs.
Suspending trading of XRP
XRP haters continue to feast while another crypto exchange stops trading the coin. After Ripple revealed that it was facing a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for illegal sales of securities, the XRP’s share price plummeted.
Shortly thereafter, a number of exchanges began delisting XRP or halting trading for US customers. The OSL, CrossTower and Beaxy exchanges all stopped trading XRP. The crypto Bitwise hedge fund withdrew the coin from its portfolio. They all cited the SEC lawsuit as the reason.
Bitstamp then threw in the towel and announced the end of XRP trading for its US clients. Bitstamp is the largest exchange to date to announce the news.
Following the recent SEC filing alleging that XRP is a security, we will discontinue trading and filings of XRP for all US customers from 8 January 2021. Other countries are not affected. Read more:
On their website, the company announced that it would halt all trading and filings for XRP as of January 8, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. UTC. US customers will then be able to withdraw XRP, while citizens of other countries will not be affected.
Bitstamp, which has a daily trading volume of $500 million, says it will monitor the situation and adjust accordingly.
The best headline
Ripple Labs announced that they were expecting an SEC trial the day before the official release of the information by the authorities. The authorities accuse CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen of conducting an illegal sale of securities „in progress“.
In the United States, securities must be registered with the relevant authorities, usually the SEC, in order to be publicly traded. Non-securities assets include ownership and currency. Ripple Labs emphasizes that XRP, which is designed to streamline money transfers, is a currency and not a security.
For its part, when the Fed comments on the status of a cryptoney, it generally refers to it as property. Some frustration arises with phenomena such as proof of stakes, in which small blocks of rewards could be treated as separate taxable events. Within the US Congress, there have been some efforts to try to smooth out these inconsistencies.
In the past, the U.S. government has suggested that it would not consider Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) to be securities. In 2019, Larsen and Garlinghouse wrote an open letter imploring the US government to slow down regulation.
Stock prices in freefall
3 month BIstamp XRP / USD chart: TradingView
After Ripple’s announcement of the upcoming trial, the share price dropped 36% in one day. Ripple had been quiet throughout the summer when many other cryptomonnages saw their prices rise. Finally, before a very large airdrop of the Flare Network’s Spark Token airdrop, the price reached a high of $0.79. Spark tokens help to implement contracts on the XRP channel, and every XRP holder was promised an airdrop after the snapshot on December 11, 2020. Then news of the trial arrived.
Despite a short bounce around $0.27, XRP is still struggling to stay afloat above $0.30. With Bitcoin having surpassed $25,000 and gained most of the attention, it can be difficult for Cryptomony No. 3 to attract the tender love and investor attention it needs.