The Ripple vs SEC feud is taking a new turn after the latest SEC hearing last Friday, March 19. The U.S. SEC lawyers stated that exchanges won’t be violating any securities laws upon relisting the XRP cryptocurrency.
XRP price has shot since then and is up 15% at the time of writing this article. As of press time, XRP is trading at a price of $0.58 with a market cap of $26.5 billion. On the weekly chart, XRP is one of the best performing cryptocurrencies in the top-ten list with nearly 35% gains in the last seven.
Interestingly, this price surge comes as XRP investors and fans have been making huge demands to exchanges to relist XRP after the latest SEC hearing. The #relistXRP is trending worldwide, starting from Australia and now in the U.S.
Things turned ugly between the SEC and XRP’s parent company Ripple after the securities regulator slapped a lawsuit just before Christmas 2020 and a day before the outgoing chairman Jay Clayton resigned. To avoid any kind of regulatory scrutiny, crypto exchanges and companies started distancing themselves with many exchanges delisting XRP trading, including the big names like Coinbase.
However, Ripple has stood its ground since then and has denied any wrongdoing with the XRP sale in 2013. Besides, it has made it clear that the blockchain startup didn’t violate any securities laws.
There’s been a lot of confusion as to who would the securities regulator penalize in case anyone is involved with the XRP trade. The recent hearing was on the SEC’s motion to get access to the personal financial transactions of Ripple executives. The Ripple lawyers had objected to this motion.
During the hearing last Friday, SEC attorney Jeremy Hogan asked a very specific question. she asked that anyone who sold XRP, sold them illegally? Replying to this the SEC lawyer said:
“No, Under Section4, Only Ripple And Affiliates Of Ripple Can Have Sold XRP Illegally.”
Thus, the lawyers have unintentionally implied that by relisting Ripple’s XRP, or allowing its trade, exchanges would not violate any of the SEC’s guidelines. Furthermore, Magistrate Judge Netburn made a big statement saying:
“My understanding about XRP is not only does it have a currency value, but it has a utility, and that utility distinguishes it from Bitcoin and Ether”.
The recent statement from the SEC lawyers finally clears the air that exchanges can once again start offering XRP trading facilities. Not sure if exchanges will soon list the XRP crypto back on their respective platform. However, this has certainly instilled fresh optimism in the crypto community.
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