Despite the ongoing legal battle with the Securities Exchange Commission, Ripple reported a 97% increase in sales of XRP for quarter one. Ripple posted its first-quarter markets report on Thursday, which revealed that total net sales of purchases had gone from $76.27 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 to $150.34 million in the first quarter of this year. It also noted that the surge in sales was led by the growing demand for RippleNet’s working capital service On-Demand Liquidity, or ODL: “The increase in XRP sales can be attributed to deeper engagement from key ODL customers. For well over …

Recently confirmed U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler punted to congress on providing more regulatory oversight to the crypto space, but also said the commission would act within its purview. In a virtual hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee today, North Carolina Representative Patrick McHenry asked Gensler what the regulatory body would be doing to ensure a “vibrant digital asset marketplace with legitimate money and the rule of law.” McHenry highlighted collaborations across regulatory agencies regarding digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Gensler said the crypto market could benefit from “greater investor protector” within the Securities and Exchange …

JP Richardson’s favorite phrase is “easy to use.” Well, maybe not, but the Exodus CEO certainly used it enough during a live ask-me-anything session that the cryptocurrency wallet maker held on Cointelegraph’s YouTube page. While the focus of the livestream was the $75 million public offering of stock that Exodus Movement has hosted — and nearly completed — inside its own Exodus Wallet, Richardson reinforced this idea regularly throughout the broadcast. “I think what a lot of people, first of all, really love about Exodus is the ease of use and how beautiful it is,” Richardson said when asked what …

INX Limited has completed the first-ever Securities and Exchange Commission-approved token sale event via an initial public offering. According to a release issued by the company, the blockchain trading platform raised $85 million in gross proceeds from over 7,200 investors — both retail and qualified institutional actors. Details from the announcement show that the average of investors who participated in the token IPO was 42. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the SEC-registered INX was looking to wrap up its token IPO before the end of April. The company had previously penciled the end of 2020 as its initial date to …

It is a pivotal moment in the development of the new digital economy. Interest in all things crypto keeps growing exponentially, and investment follows closely. There has arguably never been so much money poured into a product class that was so poorly understood, both by the wider public and by most investors. In lieu of actual understanding, stakeholders in the crypto space have to operate on reputation and trust instead. This necessity has given rise to a dangerous new con. Unlike blatant scams like OneCoin or Bitconnect, today’s blockchain opportunists and confidence tricksters often play the faux science card. “Read …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission new enforcement chief, Alex Oh, has resigned from her position with the SEC just days after taking the role. According to an official SEC announcement, Oh stepped down for personal reasons. However, in Oh’s resignation letter to Chairman Gary Gensler — as seen by Bloomberg — the former enforcement chief revealed she was stepping down to avoid becoming a distraction as she deals with controversies arising from a case she worked in the past. Oh was previously a partner at the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison private law practice, where she represented, …

Five proposed class-action lawsuits against crypto firms have been voluntarily dismissed without prejudice in New York federal courts — without costs or attorney fees to any party. Quantstamp, Status Research, Civic Technologies, HDR Global Trading, and Kaydex are off the hook, however related cases are ongoing. The five class-action lawsuits dismissed on April 27 are part of a batch of 11 filed by Law firms Selendy & Gay PLLCRoche Freedman a year earlier. The lawsuits accused several crypto firms of causing investor harm by selling digital assets that were allegedly unlicensed securities without brokerage licensing, misleading investors, and engaging in …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has extended the original 45-day window to approve a Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund, or ETF, from asset manager VanEck. According to a filing from SEC on Wednesday, the regulatory body will push the deadline for approving or disapproving VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF from May 3 to June 17, an additional 45 days. “The Commission finds that it is appropriate to designate a longer period within which to take action on the proposed rule change so that it has sufficient time to consider the proposed rule change and the comments received,” said SEC Assistant Secretary …

Unlike its neighbor to the south that continues to procrastinate, Canada seems to be fast-tracking crypto assets — as evident again last week in its regulatory green light for three new Ether (ETH)-based exchange-traded funds, North America’s first. “Having an easily accessed ETF in Canada changes the competitive landscape,” Campbell Harvey, professor of international business at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, told Cointelegraph. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission will feel pressure to approve a cryptocurrency-based ETF soon, perhaps within months, said Harvey. “It is increasingly hard to make the case to exclude crypto,” he further explained, adding: …

When the United States Securities and Exchange Commission filed legal action against Ripple Labs and its top-two executives in December, alleging that its XRP coin was in fact a security and that the firm had raised over $1.38 billion through an unregistered securities offering in 2013, many wondered if XRP would even survive. Some exchanges delisted XRP; some asset managers sold their XRP tokens. XRP had lost its place as the top 3 currency by market capitalization and was even looking like it could drop from the top 10. But reports of Ripple’s demise were spectacularly exaggerated. As of mid-April, …

Those who oversee the traditional finance sector won’t just let Bitcoin (BTC) wander off into the sunset without a fight. That’s the sentiment expressed by the World Economic Forum’s head of blockchain and digital assets, Sheila Warren, who said a “dramatic” round of regulation was about to befall Bitcoin and the wider cryptocurrency space. Warren told Bloomberg on Thursday: “We’re going to see another round of pretty dramatic attempts at regulating this space. As there’s more and more activity in these spaces there’s more and more demand signal for regulators to get engaged and involved.” Warren’s comments arrived a matter …

XRP price broke out to a new multiyear high on April 13 as a surge of trading volume in the early morning hours continued into mid-day. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that XRP registered a low of $1.42 before staging a 34% rally to a high of $1.88. The surge in price comes on the same day as both Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) established new all-time highs as mainstream excitement for the cryptocurrency sector is on the uptrend ahead Coinbase's direct listing on April 14. Momentum for XRP has been building over the past couple of weeks …