All news is rigorously fact-checked and reviewed by leading blockchain experts and seasoned industry insiders.
- Ripple supporters have filed a petition with the White House, asking that it declares XRP a currency.
- The company is set to have a court hearing with the SEC in February, with the regulator deeming XRP an illegal security.
The XRP cryptocurrency was recently deemed unregistered security by the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, in a last resort Hail Mary move, its community is appealing to the White House to intervene. The community recently filed a petition seeking to have the White House declare XRP a currency.
SEC’s “frivolous lawsuit”
The petition was filed on December 29 by an unknown individual who goes by “J.W”. “We the People ask the federal government to deem XRP, the virtual currency, a currency,” the petition begins.
The petition goes on to claim that the SEC’s lawsuit is frivolous and is against its mandate to protect investors in U.S securities. Moreover, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has already deemed XRP a currency.
The petition further pointed to the immense losses that investors have incurred as a result of the lawsuit.
Due to this action, the 40 billion dollar market for the currency is rapidly failing as companies scramble to maintain compliance. Billions of dollars of value is being wiped from the market in rapid succession and most critically, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans – the very Americans that the SEC is tasked to protect – are suffering irreparable harm and damages.
Indeed, XRP has crumbled since the SEC announced its illegal securities lawsuit against the company. The cryptocurrency is now down to a $10 billion market cap, a great fall from its $140 billion all-time high market cap. In December alone, it shed off 66% of its value as some top exchanges started delisting it to be compliant. They include Coinbase, the largest exchange in XRP’s homeland, the U.S.
As one analyst pointed out, XRP is now a bigger collapse than Enron and Worldcom.
https://twitter.com/Joshua_Frank_/status/1344420424545935365
FinCEN and the SEC disagree over XRP
J.W’s petition goes on to state:
The SEC complaint is damaging to the holders of the currency XRP, and must cease immediately. The US Government has clearly given guidance, as established by FinCEN, that XRP is a currency.
This is a reference to a 2015 enforcement action by FinCEN. The watchdog charged Ripple $700,000 for violating the Bank Secrecy Act by selling its virtual currency XRP without registering with FinCEN. In doing so, FinCEN classified XRP as a currency, and not as a security.
As Richard Holland, the creator of the now-defunct Toast XRP wallet observed at the time:
The XRP petition needs 100,000 signatures by January 28 to get a response from the White House. At press time, 18,059 people had signed it, with 81,941 more to go.
On the same day the petition went up, Ripple released a statement on the SEC lawsuit, which it termed “an attack on the entire crypto industry.” The San Francisco-based firm believes the SEC’s lack of regulatory clarity will only lead to more confusion, and consequently, huge losses for investors.
Ripple also pointed out that most of its users are not in the U.S. In countries where it’s most active users are, such as Japan and Singapore, “there are clear rules of the road.”
For eight years, we’ve built products that help hundreds of customers solve pain points around global payments — we will defend our company and look forward to settling this matter in court to finally get clarity for the U.S. crypto industry.
