I mean obviously I'm reporting on this a bit late as many players on Hive have already reported on this 16 hours ago... but it's huge news. It's also weird news. It's news that's simultaneously shocking but also somehow completely expected.
XRP is not a security.
Obviously right? I've written a dozen posts on this topic a dozen times and reached the same conclusion from multiple angles.. No matter how we chalk up the issue it's quite apparent that XRP does not apply to any of the Howey Test Prongs. Even the "an investment of money" prong is arguable (Because crypto is smart-money in itself). This is what happens when they try to use a hundred year old law on cutting edge technology. Plain and simple it's not going to make any damn sense.
The only reason people were certain Ripple would lose the lawsuit is that it "sounded right" to them. Of course these people did research into how securities law actually works. We all know that XRP is a centralized hunk of premined shit, but that's not how the law works.
I secretly thought they might lose just because the court system is obviously rigged and I didn't have a lot of faith in the judge to make the correct ruling with so much pressure coming in from nefarious forces. But it seems we have prevailed. Truly this is a win for everyone.
Very much a green day.
And this is just the beginning. No one seems to be making that big a deal out of this case because their bags haven't mooned yet. Even XRP is 'only' up 64%, which again is simultaneously a ton but also not very much considering the ramifications of this case. XRP is a buy even at these inflated prices... but this assumes one is only buying to turn a profit. Funny how that works out considering it was just legally ruled to not be an investment contract. I would never advise anyone to buy or hold XRP simply on principal alone. I feel like performing such action puts one on the wrong side of history and could even somehow prove detrimental to our reputations going forward.
Don't be surprised if the next bull run mimics 2017 with the size of its scale. Back in 2020 I was predicting that peak greed would be signaled in the 2021 run by XRP moving into the #2 slot, flipping ETH like it did back in 2017. That didn't happen, and the reason for that is a combination of factors including this lawsuit.
Now that the lawsuit has been won and everyone and their mother is talking about CBDCs (which is fully Ripple's wheelhouse) things could get pretty crazy. If there was any doubt whatsoever that the Bitcoin bottom is in and we are actually at the foothills of a bull run, this completely dispels that illusion. The bottom is in. This is a bull run. Hands down guaranteed. There is no argument. The only question is how long it's going to last. My guess is somewhere between 6 months and two years. That's how big a deal this case is.
BLACKROCK
Only a matter of time now before the ETF gets approved. Only a matter of time before halving FOMO kicks in. We are finally going to get a chance to sell some crypto at a reasonable price. How many of us will drop the ball and get greedy as the FOMO monster sucker punches us once again?
This time is...
In fact we can already see FOMO patterns pop up once again. When people talk about Blackrock, the subtext is "this time is different". This time is not different... it's never different. Stop thinking this time is different. Buy the rumor, sell the news. Those are the rules. That means now is the time to buy. The BTC Blackrock spot EFT is the news to be sold. I'm 100% going to sell at least a little bit 1 week before that EFT launches. Maybe 1 month. Still haven't decided yet. Timing these things is impossible but it's fun to try.
Speculation
No matter how much money people think is going to pour in from something like a Blackrock ETF... the market will ALWAYS TRY TO PRICE IT IN (and the market includes Blackrock itself). Always always always. There is no amount of money in existence that can pump Bitcoin higher than the speculators that want to frontrun that action. This always leads to pumps and dumps that are the opposite of what we'd expect. Speculation is instant. Actual fundamentals take YEARS to create actual value. Actual value can never be priced in, but the market continues to try to do just that over and over again. What they are really doing is just gambling against other speculators and hoping to time it right. Typical degens.
Coinbase & Binance
The SEC is pretty much guaranteed to lose every single one of their high-profile crypto cases from here on out. Not only that, many of these smaller operations will see the Ripple victory and rally behind it: refusing the settle with the SEC and pay the fee and instead fight it out in court. Most of those cases will be won as well.
At this point there is like a 0% chance that the SEC can beat an entity like Coinbase in court. Coinbase has done nothing but bend over backwards in an attempt at compliance. It is known. They are the poster-child for following the rules, and they have all the receipts to back that up.
Binance could lose their case against the SEC, but also a lot of the evidence seems to be circumstantial and hearsay. It was quite obvious that the SEC was not protecting investors at all, and the goal was to hit us as hard as they possibly could. Seriously though why would anyone make official 2 high profile cases against the two biggest players of a volatile industry back to back within 1 day if they wanted to "protect investors". Combine that with the rumors of insider trading and things really start getting interesting.
At the end of the day it doesn't even matter if the SEC wins vs Binance.US anyway. Binance Global will be completely unaffected by it and will continue operations as the biggest liquidity provider worldwide. Winning the case will just be extra. Gensler needs to get kicked while he's down. When's that loser going to resign already?
Conclusion
The bull market has started. This landmark case is a huge milestone within the entire crypto industry. Even though XRP is shit, the fact that it is shit actually proves the point of how big a deal this is. How many people thought it was literally impossible for Ripple to win. And yet here we are. Only up.
I was thinking if XRP is in the clear, then everything else is in the clear.
Still, they wanted crypto to be commodities for taxation and Wall Street manipulation. Why not right?
Yeah this is exactly the point I was trying to make.
Thanks for being concise about it.
Ripple just created a legal shield for every other crypto project.
Is it honestly still fair to say that XRP is bad?
I know Hive loves to vilify anything that isn't Hive or Bitcoin, but I think that view is now pretty outdated.
The XRPL (XRP Ledger) is decentralized. Ripple itself only runs 3 out of 706 validator nodes. Lots of different developers contribute to the blockchain code. Ripple has a ton of XRP, obviously, but it means its been able to spend over $100M on lawyers to fight the SEC. Being an organization, its been able to work on regulations all around the world and develop solutions for financial institutions to replace SWIFT. XRP validators are volunteers, so there's no fees, no more XRP will ever be created, there are 3 second transactions, it's super efficient and now it has NFTs and smart contracts. There are thousands of different companies developing on the XRPL now.
I'm sure you're set in your ways and will never change your mind, but I do think Ripple has done a lot for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole and is trying to work with businesses to adopt blockchain technology. Why is that bad?
I've made many counter-arguments in previous posts to this affect.
XRP can only get more decentralized as time goes on and Ripple continues distributing tokens out into the wild. It's not like a fiat currency that can just be printed out of thin air. Once the premine is spent it is gone forever.
The XRP community is also very strong (but even more toxic than Bitcoin maxis).
Strong is strong though so it's a bonus and a huge reason why they won the case.
The entire community took it upon themselves to tell the SEC to fuck off.
None of this is relevant to the current discussion.
In fact the worse I make XRP look in this post the more impressive it is that they won the lawsuit.
I've already gone on to say that this is a victory for everyone.
That alone gives points to Ripple.
It's just a matter of context.
Is that right?
So how much does a lawyer cost?
This is actually part of Brad Garlinghouse's bullshit and deceptive talking points.
Obviously Ripple didn't hire 1000 lawyers on six-figure salaries to work this case.
He's acting like the XRP price going down from the lawsuit is the vast majority of the cost.
Even the most high profile court cases only cost a couple million dollars.
Seriously though Brad Garlinghouse is trash just look at how many people believe this silly $100M bullshit story. I believed it for a long time as well until I actually started thinking about it.
The XRP community is absolutely awful. They just seem to believe the stupidest possible things... but their conviction was a huge part of this case as John Deaton took 3,500 XRP holders and counter-sued the SEC.
I think the $100M in legal costs is totally possible.
Look at the first page of this usgov document on litigation costs:
Lawyers cost like $1000 an hour and they would have had to go through a trillion documents from both Ripple and the SEC and a bunch of related stuff for 3 years. The fees for a single lawyer working on this full time for 3 years would be like 5 million.
But anyway, I guess my question is... is there anything that could convince you personally that XRP is not bad?
Lawyers only cost $1000 an hour if you're a pleb that can't afford to buy in bulk and the hours are low but the specialty is high. Those are the kinds of prices people pay to the best criminal lawyers to keep them out of jail. Not for some paper-pushing SEC case.
But yeah circling back to the main point: yes XRP could turn out to be pretty good if the right circumstances present themselves. Until then I remain extremely skeptical.
Totally fair to be skeptical. What type of circumstance do you mean? Something to do with the technology itself or more the funds allocations?
Hm no just the ecosystem as a whole would have to prove itself legitimate.
Basically it's all about job and wealth creation.
Any crypto that can't actually build a circular economy will get left in the dust.
Most won't.
Until people get paid directly for their labor in crypto I'm not impressed.
As far as I know only Bitcoin and Hive really done that in any significant capacity.
And Bitcoin is going to have major scaling and deflation challenges.
Did a bit more looking around and maybe $200M on a multi year lawsuit is possible?
Still not sure how those numbers add up.
I think in really any lawsuit, the real winners are usually only the lawyers.
Haha yeah I can't wait for AI to totally gut that entire industry and make litigation dirt cheap.
Will be a good laugh for sure.
It's already happening really.
The ability for AI to make discovery x1000 times easier is already in the works.
Man, I hope so... although there was that report of a lawyer using ChatGPT, and it was just straight up making up cases for precedent ... but I'm sure there are some massive savings here and people can start to confidently go through legal proceedings without lawyers.
XRP is shit, and thus, no hard feelings, no remorse when ruthlessly buying and selling it.
I think that bitcoin is going to $37k - $39k and then have a huge pull back, because of "something"
The BlackRockSpot (i seem to remember this from Treasure Island...) seems to fill the something category.
I believe we will hit $100k near the holidays, and that will trigger a lot of people to buy things with their bitcoin. Its a magic number that seems to mean, getting your money's worth to bitcoin holders.
XRP is still way undervalue. If the SEC hadn't pulled their crap, it would probably be over $10 right now. Maybe even $100s. I feel that XRP will go to $1000s, and then something bad happens. Probably their own greed... or maybe control, bites them bad.
I am watching the 1/ XRP/BTC chart. I think that will be the best play in the near term. Or at least the safest. We are still early in this bullrun.
A win for one is always a win for all! This has proven a point to the world that crypto is here to stay
Let the ripple effect set in
I was literally just going to say this. Glad we agree.
LOL
Well, gratz on the victory.
Thanks!
Are you congratulating yourself here as well?
This is an everybody wins kind of moment.
People think the Wild West of crypto is ending.
It literally hasn't even begun.
Silk Road was a joke compared to what's coming.
I really don't know how long the XRP pump will hold onto we'll just have to wait and see.
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I think this is great for crypto in general.
I really don't like XRP, but I am glad they won this victory. In my opinion, XLM (a semi spinoff of XRP) is a better iteration of what XRP is. A rising tide lifts all boats though :-)
I still can't rip off my tinfoil hat though and the niggling feeling that BTC, XRP, and most majors cryptos are somehow government creations :-)
Doesn't matter though. I am just arrogant enough to think I will know just the right time to jump off the ship and into a lifeboat. Hahaha! Yeah right ;-)