Ripple have finally ended their silence following a series of delistings by major crypto exchanges such as Coinbase after charges were leveled against the company by the SEC. With XRP’s value in free fall, Ripple Labs have released a statement vowing to respond to the charges leveled by the SEC. The statement began as follows;
“The public and press have only heard the story from the SEC’s side, and we’ll be filing our response in a few weeks to address these unproven allegations against Ripple.”
SEC using XRP to target entire industry?
The statement went on to alarmingly claim that the SEC was trying to use Ripple to bring down the entire crypto industry in the United States. It further claimed that Ripple had sought regulatory clarity on crypto assets for years but to no avail.
With several exchanges such as Coinbase, OKCoin, Bitstamp and a host of others planning to delist the token, its value has been tumbling down tremendously. Ripple remains defiant though, claiming in its statement that it would continue to support and operate all its products outside the U.S. The statement explained;
“The majority of our customers aren’t in the U.S. and overall XRP volume is largely traded outside of the U.S. There are clear rules of the road for using XRP in the UK, Japan, Switzerland and Singapore, for example.”
Falling back on foreign jurisdictions
The latter part of the statement suggests that Ripple sees a pathway to its survival in other countries even if things don’t improve for the token in the U.S. Few within the crypto industry have appeared to defend XRP from the SEC’s allegations with Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson saying he wasn’t issue there was any clear issue with how XRP was being distributed.
Ripple had indeed raised regulatory clarity questions months prior to the SEC’s charges and that could work in its favor as the firm prepares to go into legal battle. With Ripple claiming that its token was being used to end crypto and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson stating that he does not see the XRP case having a domino effect on the rest of the industry, we are in for an interesting couple of months.
Image Courtesy of Bloomberg.com
