“XRP will be here and that type of framework will continue to grow exponentially whereas the traditional system including that on which the SEC has based its entire existence will continue to be overshadowed by it.”
XRP, the digital asset that is indirectly on trial in the ongoing SEC v. Ripple lawsuit, is the fourth cryptocurrency by market cap – excluding stablecoins – only behind Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Binance Coin.
The coin used to rank higher, only below Bitcoin, but much has changed since then. In 2018, the then-SEC Director of Corporation Finance, William Hinman, gave a famous speech stating that Ethereum and Bitcoin were not securities.
The digital asset space was hungry (and still is) for regulatory clarity and that speech provided enough room for institutions to make their moves with the little information at hand, which paved the way for a ETH frenzy.
Three years later, it turned out that Hinman’s speech was only his “personal opinion” or so the SEC and the ex-official claim. Or they used to.
The SEC wants its speech-related internal documents kept from being disclosed in fact discovery, which led the plaintiff to change the tune and state the speech was part of the regulator’s public guidance.
Unconvincing is what probably most feel about the SEC, but Magistrate Analisa Torres will be the judge of that.
In the meantime, the SEC is also trying to argue the SEC internal documents have become irrelevant for the case following the court’s denial of the individual defendants’ motion to dismiss the case.
The Ripple counsel seems to be increasingly tired of the SEC’s motions to delay the handover. The company wants to enter the summary judgement schedule by mid-May and get this case over with.
Tied to the XRP lawsuit, the blockchain giant is unable to successfully grow to its potential. Its flagship products, Ripplenet and On-Demand Liquidity, are expected to accelerate onboarding once the court case is over. The same goes for its Central Bank Digital Asset (CBDC) solution. On top of that, the long desired plan to go public via initial public offering will remain a mirage until a settlement or a court ruling clear the way.
Like Ripple, XRP is expected to see better days soon as its price is linked to the adoption of Ripple’s network.
We spoke to Natalia Zakharova, Head of Business Development at retail and institutional FX broker FXOpen, who recently told Finance Feeds that a Ripple settlement may trigger the price of XRP to skyrocket.
We queried about how much the XRP lawsuit is affecting Ripple’s client onboarding. Ms. Zakharova painted quite the bullish picture for XRP.
“There is so much flexibility afforded to the financial world by blockchain-based protocols such as Ripple, that it is very unlikely that any institutional partner will be concerned with this matter once it is concluded and settlement has been reached.
“Most institutional partners which have begun to use tokenized methods such as XRP are very much on board with the modern, digital economy and are likely to be thinking that XRP will be here and that type of framework will continue to grow exponentially whereas the traditional system including that on which the SEC has based its entire existence will continue to be overshadowed by it. It’s just evolution and progress”, said the FXOpen executive.
“Therefore the market demand, and the infrastructural development are likely to continue. Once it’s over and that is out of the way, it will be a case of onwards and upwards.”
