SEC clamps down on XRP amid Coinbase delisting

Ripple’s XRP token has endured a woeful holiday season with it losing more than 73% of its value since November 24.

The world’s fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, which was once worth more than $120 billion, has been rocked by an SEC lawsuit against its founders.

The SEC alleges that Ripple executives sold, and continue to sell, an unregistered security in the form of the XRP token.

“Defendants continue to hold substantial amounts of XRP and – with no registration statement in effect – can continue to monetise their XRP while using the information asymmetry they created in the market for their own gain, creating substantial risk to investors,” the complaint states.

XRPUSD chart by TradingView

This caused the likes of Bitstamp and Coinbase to delist the XRP token from their respective platforms, resulting in further sell pressure from investors.

At the time of writing XRP is worth just $0.2025 as more exchanges are expected to delist it over the coming weeks.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who previously stated that token sales were “vital to Ripple’s survival”, responded to the SEC by stating that it was a regulatory attack on the wider cryptocurrency market as a whole.

While Coinbase’s decision did cause a momentary sell-off across other assets, Ethereum and Bitcoin both recovered strongly in spite of XRP’s demise.

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