The SEC is likely on the eve of filing a lawsuit against Ripple alleging that XRP is a security a move that is causing pain in the altcoin industry
Ripple sounds like it is about to be sued by the SEC, a move which has long been rumored and always possible, but now sounds like is actually happening.
The news comes as the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse announced that the SEC would bring the lawsuit in the very near future.
And as you can imagine, Garlinghouse is not happy, saying...
"It’s not just Grinch-worthy, it’s shocking.It’s an attack on the entire crypto industry and American innovation.”
Following that up with:
“XRP is a currency, and does not have to be registered as an investment contract. In fact, the Justice Department and the Treasury’s FinCEN already determined that XRP is a virtual currency in 2015 and other G20 regulators have done the same. No other country has classified XRP as a security.”
“The SEC has permitted XRP to function as a currency for over eight years, and we question the motivation for bringing this action just days before the change in administration. Instead of providing a clear regulatory framework for crypto in the U.S., (SEC Chairman) Jay Clayton inexplicably decided to sue Ripple — leaving the actual legal work to the next Administration.”
Predictably, XRP is dropping significantly over the last 24 hours, dropping roughly 20%.
Altcoins likely to suffer as well...
In my opinion this is part of the reason altcoins have been so weak the last couple days.
Sure, we had a drop in bitcoin but altcoins got hit much harder.
I think the fear there is that if XRP is labeled a security and sued by the SEC there is probably a long list of others that could be as well.
Some altcoin investors fearing that their favorite coin could be next are moving to tether/btc/cash in order to de-risk.
In the long run, this may be a big nothing burger as perhaps Ripple could move overseas or they may be able to settle with a small fine, similar to what EOS and Blockone did.
However, it may cause weakness in the near term for altcoin investors.
This coming at a time when we could all use a big fat alsteason...
Stay informed my friends.
Image source:
-Doc
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Obviously I hate XRP and he is a huge douchebag, but he is our douchebag. If they win this lawsuit it could spark a legendary alt-market.
This is one reason why I like my heavy exposure to Hive. We are x1000 times harder to attack now that we've forked Steemit Inc off the network.
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Yeah where do you deliver the lawsuit?
There isnt even a foundation to go after.
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Not only that, but the hostile takeover itself proves we aren't being lorded over by anyone. Any entity that attempts to take centralized control will be kicked to the curb and lose all their stake. No one would dare risk 80M Hive at this point.
If the SEC tries to go after top witness and they drop out they will simply be replaced by other witnesses.
Hard to go after many of the top witnesses since most are not in the States. They could try to do something but in many of the countries they reside in, nobody cares about the SEC.
Yes we did prove resilient. And quite frankly, with all the HIVE that was doled out the last 9 months, it is only getting more difficult to stage such an outside attack. It was probably impossible on Steem outside of the path that Sun took. If not for Steemit Inc's stake, takeover was likely not possible.
Another year or two will help to push things even wider. Each passing month makes it more difficult.
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It's a long battle ahead of us - there will be many attempts to try and control and delegitimize cryptos. But I think/hope they will prevail.
Yep I agree. Even if this did turn out bad for XRP/Ripple, it doesn't mean all altcoins are created equal. The better projects may just get thrown out with the bath water for a period of time. I would think coins that didn't have an ICO would mostly be safe.
Good think HIVE is out of reach since it was never sold.
Even back in the early days of STEEM, it was smart to have it mined. Even though that ended up causing a lot of problems due to the ninja-mined stake, it did keep the SEC at bay.
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This just makes it more important that any cryptocurrency doesn't have key people who are residents of USA or were born there...
USA can't sue non-US companies or people who are not actively doing business with US companies or residents.
I've seen some projects that use Amazon for their websites, use European providers for the backend servers, including for example Hetzner Cloud, which is based in Germany.
Let's follow the next chapters of this story.
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Right now, it sure looks like everything is taking it in the shorts.
On the other hand, the statement from the SEC made it pretty clear that they did NOT see BTC or ETH as "securities," and the Ripple "structure" has always struck me as a bit dodgy, and definitely not decentralized. Let's face it, they even have a CEO.
It will be interesting to see how it plays out, though,
=^..^=
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