- The price of XRP almost doubled on the news, it reached #4 in market cap
- Court says XRP legality depends on who you sell it to
Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) ruled the “offer and sale of XRP on digital asset exchanges did not amount to offers and sales of investment contracts” in the case of Ripple Labs vs. SEC, throwing the market into a frenzy – an effect on the market that was quite unexpected.
The price of XRP almost doubled on the news, and the cryptocurrency rose up to #4 in market cap rankings, passing Binance Coin (BNB) and USD Coin (USDC). It is currently trading for $0.7655, up 62.31% in the last 24 hours according to Coinmarketcap, and the price will keep increasing.
Trading volume surge crashed exchange
Crypto fans rushed to buy up XRP, causing US crypto exchange Uphold to go down. It was one of the few established exchanges in the US that had not chosen to delist XRP, Cointelegraph wrote.
Kraken and Coinbase relisted the token on their respective platforms. Gemini is expected to follow suit.
Ruling spells continued market uncertainly
According to the court’s decision, XRP is sold both legally and illegally – it depends on who you sell it to. When insiders distribute it or it’s sold anonymously on exchanges, it’s legal. When acquired by a VC firm or an institutional client, it’s illegally sold as an investment contract.
Justification for the verdict
According to an expert writing for CoinDesk, the ruling will result in continued uncertainty in the crypto market. The court wrote as justification for the decision:
Ripple’s Programmatic Sales were blind bid/ask transactions. Programmatic Buyers could not have known if their payments of money went to Ripple, or any other seller of XRP. A Programmatic Buyer stood in the same shoes as a secondary market purchaser who did not know to whom or what it was paying its money. Programmatic Buyers purchased XRP with an expectation of profit, but they did not derive that expectation from Ripple’s efforts because none of the Programmatic Buyers were aware that they were buying XRP from Ripple.
