Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty has accused the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of artificially depressing the cryptocurrency market. Alderoty tweeted recently: “The only ‘efforts of others’ that appeared to actually matter when it comes to moving crypto markets and suppressing them massively and artificially were of course those of the SEC.”
In December 2020 the SEC sued Ripple, accusing the company of illegal operations when selling Ripple without registering it as a security. In addition to the lawsuits against Coinbase Global, Binance Holdings, and others, the SEC has been led by Chairman Gary Gensler.
Gensler’s Departure Fuels XRP Price Surge and Market Uncertainty
For Bitcoin, the SEC considers it a commodity, while Gensler says most other cryptocurrencies are unregistered securities brought under its jurisdiction. But Gensler’s impending departure in January has led to an Ripple price surge.
XRP’s market value recently surged by a healthy $100 billion, making the token the third largest cryptocurrency, for a little while. XRP rose as much as 20% on Monday, supported by a surge in prices to a near seven year high of $2.50, equal to a distance its price has not advanced by enough since Jan. 2018. Ripple is trading at $2.28, up 19 percent in a day, with a market cap of $130.29 billion.
The rise in XRP’s token comes as record $95 million in inflows have accompanied an increasing speculations of approval for an Ripple U.S. ETF, as Ripple enjoys other positive developments such as WisdomTree filing S-1 with the SEC for an XRP spot ETF, which joins other firms Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary in the race to launch a fund tracking XRP’s daily price.
