2021 was the year when Ethereum consolidated its position as altcoin king but what happened to its once-biggest-competitor, XRP? Well, if you listen to its supporters and many retail investors, the token’s woes are all the fault of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
У децембру 2020. СЕЦ наплаћено Ripple, along with executive chairman Christian Larsen and CEO Bradley Garlinghouse, with issuing an unregistered $1.3 billion securities offering. The XRP community is claiming injustice and victimization and John Deaton, a lawyer who represents nearly 70,000 investors, потраживања that the SEC’s lawsuit has potentially helped other crypto tokens get ahead of the XRP.
Deaton is even оптужујући the SEC of an outright conflict of interest with Ethereum, alleging that Jay Clayton, the SEC’s previous chairman (who was in favor of suing Ripple), currently provides legal services to Joseph Lubin’s company, ConsenSyns via his firm Sullivan and Cromwell.
Before the SEC’s lawsuit was announced, Ether (ETH) had already прерастао XRP’s market cap by nearly as three times. However, the lawsuit does seem to have had an immediate impact on XRP’s price as it fell by nearly 100% following the SEC’s announcement.
This has led to a strong feeling among XRP’s most fervent supporters that Ethereum has an unfair advantage. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler recently поновио that only Bitcoin is a commodity while most crypto tokens are in breach of regulations. In another interview, Gensler also изјавио that crypto tokens issued to the public to raise funds for an enterprise with the aim that they will eventually go up in value passes the Howey test for securities.
Gensler’s consistent issue with crypto has been the lack of official disclosures, and the SEC argues that from 2013 Ripple raised a total of $ КСНУМКС милијарди by selling XRP tokens “without providing the type of financial and managerial information typically provided in registration statements and subsequent periodic and current filings.”
Larson is being accused of making up to $600 million selling XRP tokens while Ripple used the money from its XRP sales to fund its enterprise – a practice that the SEC says fits the definition of a security.
Neither Ripple nor Larsen denies they profited from the sale of the tokens. Ripple is instead focusing its legal defense on аргументујући that XRP is not a security, that it didn’t receive a notice in advance of the lawsuit on its irregularities, and that the sale of XRP tokens made up only a small portion of the overall trading volume.
Таласање такође поднесен a Freedom of Information Request asking the SEC to explain how it came to the conclusion that Ether was not a security.
It might be reasonable to agree with XRP investors that the SEC has selected a single specific target to make an example of rather than tackling the wider industry. After all, Gensler himself has admitted that issuers of crypto-tokens are not in line with regulations and the connection between the previous SEC chairman and Joseph Lubin also raises many questions.
Source: https://protos.com/how-ripples-xrp-went-from-top-ethereum-challenger-to-altcoin-also-ran/