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- Uphold will not stop trading XRP despite the ongoing SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs.
- Abra’s CEO believes a settlement between the SEC and Ripple is most likely, as both sides have made mistakes.
While the vast majority of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges have stopped or paused trading XRP for American customers, Uphold is bucking the trend. Despite the securities lawsuit filed against Ripple Labs and its founder just before Christmas, the exchange intends to continue listing XRP and offering it for trading until a final ruling is reached. Uphold CEO JP Thieriot wrote via Twitter:
Uphold will continue to list XRP until and unless the Complaint is adjudicated against Ripple – specifically citing that XRP is, today, a security, or trading volume dissipates to a point where we can no longer support.
Reasons not to delist XRP
As Thieriot discussed, Uphold trusts hopes “other exchanges will take a similar stance rather than passing judgment before the court’s decision.” With that, Thieriot also took direct aim at other exchanges, such as Binance, Bittrex, and Coinbase, which have taken preemptive action to avoid being in the SEC’s line of fire themselves.
Furthermore, Uphold’s CEO pointed out the significance of the lawsuit for the entire crypto market. Thieriot hopes that “due process resolution to the SEC/Ripple dispute can both set the goalposts for token offerings going forward, as well as clear the fogbank of uncertainty that now presumably settles over the Stellar’s and Filecoin’s of the world, if not ETH itself.”
Uphold’s CEO also criticized the SEC’s actions, writing about the massive financial damages crypto investors have suffered as a result of the SEC’s action against Ripple. As Thieriot notes, the SEC is tasked with ensuring consumer protection and stopping “bad actors.” However, the lawsuit against Ripple Labs shows “several conundrums.”
What if punishing the actions of a couple of parties not only directly harms XRP holders (most of whom probably assumed tacit approval after seven years of inaction), but also threatens to harm participants in similar projects […]
How is” invoking billion dollar losses for innocent third parties”, as an ex Comissioner of the SEC recently put it, in the interest of protecting consumers?
In addition to Uphold, there are currently a handful of other exchanges that are also taking a “wait and see” approach to XRP. These include Indodax, BTC Markets, Bitrue, Revolt and Biteeu.
Abra CEO thinks settlement between SEC and Ripple most likely
Even though crypto app Abra is among the platforms that have decided to delist XRP, CEO Bill Barhydt expressed his support for Ripple. He believes that both the SEC and Ripple made mistakes, which is why the most likely outcome of the dispute is that the district judge will force both parties to settle.
Specifically, Barhydt, like Thieriot, sees the SEC’s long hesitation as a factor that could work in Ripple’s favor:
The problem I have with the SEC side is they waited eight years. That’s just crazy to me. […] Now you can have something that starts out as a security sale which eventually becomes a commodity. But that’s not what Ripple said they were doing. They said this was a commodity sale alone, so both sides to me have got this completely wrong. They should have worked this out six years ago
