Ripple Update: eToro halts trading, community initiates White House petition, was Grayscale's XRP sell-off a mistake?
The Ripple lawsuit continues to escalate, with the well-known brokerage platform eToro announcing the suspension of XRP trading for U.S. users. In addition, the latest developments include the views of Ripple's CTO, a petition launched by Ripple enthusiasts on the White House website, and rumors of Grayscale selling XRP and XLM being proven false.
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eToro Suspends Trading for U.S. Users
The situation with Ripple's XRP can be described as "everyone is rising while I am falling." In the past seven days, among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, only XRP has dropped by 16%, while the rest have seen an increase of over 20%.
On December 31st, eToro announced that it will temporarily suspend XRP trading on its U.S. platform starting January 3rd. Deposits, withdrawals, and wallets are not affected. As of now, platforms that have suspended XRP-related trading activities, in addition to eToro, include:
White House Petition
The Ripple community is not sitting idly by. A group of Ripple enthusiasts initiated a petition on the U.S. White House petition website, requesting that authorities classify Ripple as a currency rather than a security. The petition states:
The SEC should protect American investors, but it hastily labeled XRP, previously classified as a currency by FinCEN, as a security. As major institutions delist XRP due to compliance issues, billions of dollars in market value evaporate, causing irreparable harm to the tens of thousands of U.S. investors that the SEC is supposed to protect.
The petition emphasizes that the SEC's accusations are harming XRP holders and must be stopped immediately. However, as of now, only about 25,302 people have signed, far from the hundred thousand threshold. If successful in obtaining a hundred thousand signatures within 30 days, the White House must respond to the issue within 60 days.
Ripple CTO: Company Cannot Not Hold XRP
Following the lawsuit, Ripple officials and the CEO have come forward to respond, emphasizing that the formal lawsuit in court will restore justice to Ripple. Ripple's CTO, David Schwartz, also responded for the first time in the crypto community's discussion of Ripple. One crypto enthusiast pointed out:
Ripple's original sin is holding 55 billion XRP, although it is in escrow accounts, it is still under their control, undoubtedly a symbol of shortsightedness and greed.
What do you think we should have done? As soon as there was a market price, giveaways stopped working.
โ ๐ณ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ฃ (@JoelKatz) December 28, 2020
David Schwartz stated:
Initially, we gave XRP to users, but once it had a market price, the tokens were immediately sold, causing significant harm to the company. I believe we have done well in asset management, but not perfectly. We don't want to hold XRP forever, but it has value in the market, so it is unlikely to be given away directly, which poses a strange challenge.
ARK Invest Analyst: Ripple Case Helps Boost Bitcoin
Renowned investment firm Ark Invest analyst Yassine Elmandjra recently expressed his views in an interview, stating that XRP's sharp decline will further encourage the public to view Bitcoin differently. He noted:
After experiencing this incident, the public will realize that Bitcoin is unique, which is beneficial for long-term price growth. We cannot interpret Bitcoin's scarcity unilaterally; this scarcity is a proven scarce asset, combined with an issuance mechanism that cannot be manipulated, making it vastly different from assets like Tesla.
Finally, major media outlets previously cited data from tracking platform Bybt, data from the platform showed that a large amount of XRP and XLM flowed out of Grayscale on December 31st. However, according to the latest official holdings released by Grayscale, this did not occur. Bybt later told external media that there were some delays in tracking Grayscale's holdings data.
It is understood that the U.S. Southern District Court of New York has scheduled February 22nd this year as the lawsuit date for the SEC's accusation of Ripple selling unregistered securities.