The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its impending $1.3 billion USD lawsuit has taken its toll on Ripple (XRP) in the past few days since the days following the announcement.
Now that XRP is under even greater scrutiny by the SEC, firms and exchanges which hold XRP are pulling out, lest they get implicated in the legal battle. Luxembourg-based crypto exchange Bitstamp is the first major exchange to delist XRP, days after smaller exchanges in the US – Beaxy, CrossTower and OSL – suspended XRP-related transactions.
XRP is hanging by a thread as it hovers between the $0.25 to $0.30 range after hitting a low of $0.22, experiencing a 33% crash on December 24. The coin is currently trading at $0.29.
Investment firm Bitwise was one of the first major players to act, liquidating all of its XRP holdings in its Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund within 24 hours of the announcement going live. Before Bitstamp, only small exchanges based in the US took action, as the rest of the market took on a wait-and-see approach.
“In light of the SEC’s recent filing alleging XRP is a security, we are going to halt XRP trading and deposits for all US customers on January 8, 2021. Other countries are not affected,” the tweet reads.
Market-maker B2C2 has also suspended all XRP-related trading with its US-based counterparties, joining other market-makers such as Galaxy Digital and Jump Trading which were the first two firms to halt their deals involving XRP.
