Ripple v. SEC case update as of April 24, 2023

As the cryptocurrency sector is still on the edge of its seat, waiting for the judge to pass the final decision in the widely publicized lawsuit between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), regulatory uncertainty has already started to affect the blockchain company’s business and its standing with the XRP community.

Indeed, Ripple’s newest product, Liquidity Hub (LH), lacks support for XRP, causing outrage among part of the XRP community. However, the blockchain company’s General Counsel, Stuart Alderoty, explained it was “an enterprise (institutional) product, not retail” and that regulatory clarity was important to enterprise customers.

Having said that, Alderoty confirmed that, in the future, there might still be support for the cryptocurrency, stating that “we’re keen to support XRP in LH when we can provide a good customer experience.” Seemingly, the lawyer was hinting at the possibility of introducing XRP after the court decision in the Ripple v. SEC case brings more clarity into the sector.

So what is security?

Elsewhere, it has come to the public’s attention that the SEC has recently named six crypto assets as securities, including Dash (DASH), Algorand (ALGO), OMG Network (OMG), Monolith (TKN), NAGA (NGC), and IHT Real Estate Protocol (IHT), in a lawsuit against crypto exchange Bittrex (but not against the issuers), according to the SEC press release from April 17.

Specifically, the SEC alleges that these six digital assets listed on the crypto trading platform should be considered securities under US law because, as the agency claims, investors had “reasonable expectation of profits.” Commenting on the development, David Schwartz, the CTO at Ripple, said on Twitter that this “sounds like investment advice to me.”

Interestingly, the SEC boss Gary Gensler still refuses to provide a clear answer to the repeatedly asked question of whether Ethereum (ETH) is a security, including during his recent testimony before the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, as Finbold reported on April 19.

Meanwhile, XRP was at press time changing hands at the price of $0.46, down 1.92% on the day, as well as declining 11.18% across the previous seven days but still holding on to the 8.47% increase to its price in the last month, according to the latest chart data.