XRP soars after ruling
What's being bought and sold*
TOP TRENDING ASSETS
*Customers buying or selling the asset as a percentage of all customers who have traded the asset in the past 24 hours on the Uphold platform, as of 8 a.m. EST 14th July 2023
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What’s up
Ripple Declares Victory, Investors Cheer After Judge Rules XRP Is Not Necessarily A Security
On Thursday, in a landmark decision, a U.S. judge handed a partial, but essentially huge, win to Ripple in its legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which claimed Ripple's XRP is an unlawfully issued security. No, it's not, not necessarily, ruled the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The “offer and sale of XRP on digital asset exchanges did not amount to offers and sales of investment contracts,” Judge Analisa Torres said in her ruling on the litigants’ cross-motions for summary judgment.
Referencing the three-pronged "Howey" test on which courts have relied in prior cases involving the question of what constitutes an investment contract, Judge Torres added this: “the record cannot establish the third Howey prong to these transactions.”
XRP spiked nearly 100% after news of the ruling spread yesterday. A slew of other altcoins, including Cardano’s ADA, Solana’s SOL and Polygon’s MATIC, all rallied as well. The SEC in its lawsuits against big exchanges has labeled ADA, SOL, MATIC and others as being unlawfully issued.
Major coins also shared in the groundswell of excitement connected with the ruling relating to the sale of XRP on exchanges.
Bitcoin, as of 7:51 a.m. (EST), was roughly $31,200 on a 24-hour gain of 2.1%.
Ethereum rose 6% to just a few dollars shy of $2K.
What's down
XRP Comes In For Landing After Rocket Ride
As of Friday morning, XRP was in simmer mode after boiling over to as high as $0.94.
XRP is now the fourth-largest crypto with a market capitalization of $42 billion. That figure reached $46 billion at one point yesterday, and half of that total cap was amassed in just three hours (Cointelegraph).
As of 8 a.m. (EST), XRP sat at $0.79 having gained 68% since this time yesterday.
The all-time high for the digital asset associated with Ripple – the technology company that yesterday got a partial but crucial victory in its three-year battle versus the SEC – came back in early 2018, during the height of the first crypto bull market.
XRP reached $3.40 on January 8, 2018.
During its nascent stage, circa nine years ago, XRP was, at its nadir, $0.00268, according to CoinGecko.
Short sellers, of XRP futures contracts, lost $33 million in the aftermath of the ruling, according to Coinglass data.
And an XRP buying frenzy momentarily stymied Uphold, one of the few exchanges still listing XRP.
“Yes, we went down," Uphold's Twitter account said. "But no platform could cope with the 50x spike in volume we saw.”
What's next
Can XRP Keep Rallying?
Go ahead, call it a Ripple effect. Yesterday's mostly favorable court ruling for the decentralized ledger technology company already has led to XRP being re-listed on Coinbase and Kraken.
Forsaken altcoins are leaping higher. Crypto winter has been declared over. Sort of?
“The judgments are a huge step forward for the industry,” Chris Martin, head of research at Amberdata, told CNBC. “We’re starting to get clarity on what constitutes a security and what constitutes a commodity," he added.
The SEC now will have to revise their tactics with respect to their ongoing crypto exchange cases, which carry implications for a slew of alts. However, and it is worth reemphasizing, XRP only scored a partial victory – partial in that the judge also ruled institutional sales of XRP by Ripple did constitute the selling of securities; and this part of the mixed-message decision has implications for initial coin offerings. It’s not crystal clear how this judgment will affect exchanges, mostly involved in secondary sales, as Martin explained.
Nevertheless, the long-awaited XRP decision was viewed as a make-or-break moment for the crypto industry, weighed down by regulatory and macro pressures.
XRP’s price nearly doubled after Ripple's courtroom triumph.
After nearly reaching $1, the question now becomes: can XRP keep the momentum going? Some indicators do show XRP's rally has legs.
Its pump coincides with trading volumes reaching a 10-month high (Cointelegraph).
Meanwhile, the number of XRP transactions involving large wallets – so-called "whales," holding more than $100,000 worth – climbed to their highest level of the year.
Brian Q, an analyst at Santiment, said the XRP pump may only just be getting started: "If whales are increasing supply, it's a sign of good things to come."
