As token prices plunge and Ripple prepares for court, a band of XRP enthusiasts have rallied around a petition that may force a White House statement on the recent SEC lawsuit alleging Ripple conducted an unregistered securities offering. A petition filed on the White House-run We the People website titled “We the People ask the federal government to deem XRP, the virtual currency, a currency,” has now crossed 10,000 signatures. Created by the Obama administration in 2011, We the People allows users to create petitions that, upon reaching 100,000 signatures within 30 days, will prompt an official White House response. …

It’s safe to say that 2020 has been a banner year for the digital-asset space. Bitcoin (BTC) soared past its previous high, and many other prominent cryptocurrencies reached their highest levels since the heyday of 2017 and early 2018. Across the financial services industry, institutional voices are expressing reinvigorated interest in digital assets. The growth and maturation of this space has been impossible to ignore, engendering plenty of optimism among those who build the platforms and systems on which it runs. Unfortunately, not all the headlines from the past year have been positive. Several well-known crypto exchanges and other organizations …

The XRP token’s market capitalization has fallen almost $130 billion since its all-time high in 2018, making the cryptocurrency project’s decline comparable to the collapse of major financial institutions. According to Josh Frank of crypto-focused research company The TIE, the project is experiencing a collapse similar to some of the biggest corporate scandals and catastrophes in recent history. XRP's market cap has fallen by 93% from $137B to under $10B. That makes the value of the XRP collapse bigger than Enron and Worldcom. While not a bankruptcy, XRP is effectively the third largest collapse of all time behind Lehman Brothers …

Update 12.31.2020 at 15:49 ET. Grayscale has clarified to Cointelegraph that despite the data set published by Bybt on Dec. 30, the fund has not liquidated positions in XRP or XLM. Grayscale's commentary is available here. Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital asset manager, has reportedly dumped a significant portion of its XRP and XLM holdings. Data from Bybt, a cryptocurrency futures trading platform, reveals that Grayscale’s XRP holdings declined by more than 9.18 million on Dec. 29, bringing its total position to 26.45 million XRP, worth $5.77 million at press time. On the same day, Grayscale reportedly liquidated over …

With XRP plunging in value following a wave of exchange delistings and trading suspensions, Ripple Labs issued a statement Tuesday vowing to respond to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s allegations against the company. The statement opens with the following message: “The public and press have only heard the story from the SEC’s side, and we’ll be filing our response in a few weeks to address these unproven allegations against Ripple.” The statement claims that the SEC is using Ripple to bring down the entire cryptocurrency industry in the United States and that, for years, the company has sought …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase will suspend trading for XRP in response to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission taking legal action against Ripple. According to a blog post published today by Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal, the exchange will fully suspend XRP trading starting on Jan. 19 at 10:00 am PST. Coinbase clarified that “trading may be halted earlier as needed” to maintain the exchange’s market health metrics. In addition, the suspension will reportedly not affect Ripple-backed Flare Network's upcoming Spark (FLR) token airdrop. "The trading suspension will not affect customers' access to XRP wallets which will remain …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has not been kind to crypto in the past year. In March 2020, in the SEC v. Telegram case, the Commission won a worldwide injunction against the proposed issuance of Grams by Telegram, undoing years of innovative work even in the absence of any allegations of fraud. Then, on the last day of September 2020, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein dashed the hopes of Kik Interactive by ruling in favor of the SEC’s motion for summary judgment in SEC v. Kik Interactive, finding that Kik had sold securities when it issued its Kin crypto tokens. …

The United States is in desperate need of open-minded cryptocurrency regulations from the incoming Biden administration, according to Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz. Appearing in a Thursday segment of CNBC’s Sqwuak Box, Novogratz said the Bitcoin (BTC) bull market has proven resilient to the recent wave of anti-crypto rhetoric coming from Capitol Hill: “It tells you about how powerful this bull market is [...] They are throwing lots at the system, and it’s not actually impacting it.” Nevertheless, for the cryptocurrency industry to truly succeed in the long run, more regulatory clarity is needed. Referring to the incoming Biden administration, …

It seems like every week we hear news of another DeFi project being hacked or exploited. The latest crop of victims includes such projects as Harvest Finance, Akropolis, Value DeFi, Origin and of course Compound. When exploits do occur, they usually involve manipulating the reference price like ETH/DAI on a data source, such as Curve, Kyber or Coinbase Pro. Sometimes, it’s a mistake, as in the SNX case where the Korean Won was quoted with the wrong decimal place. Related: Finance Redefined: You get hacked, they get hacked, everyone gets hacked As decentralized finance grows, the potential for exploits will …

Bitwise Asset Management, one of the largest crypto fund managers, has fully divested from XRP amid the regulatory backlash against Ripple. In an official press release, Bitwise announced Wednesday that its position in XRP has been liquidated because its fund “does not invest in assets that are reasonably likely to be deemed securities under federal or state securities laws.” It continues: “Bitwise's decision to liquidate its position in XRP was based on consideration of new public information from the SEC's complaint.” Bitwise’s crypto index fund was launched in 2017 to provide institutional investors with digital-asset exposure. Assets under management surpassed …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is listening. At least, per a Dec. 23 announcement, the SEC is responding to long-term industry complaints that nobody knows who can handle security token trading. The SEC is both requesting comment on the issue and extending a hand to the crypto industry. Perhaps most notably, the commission's announcement will keep broker-dealers safe from enforcement for the next five year: "In particular, the Commission’s position, which will expire after a period of five years from the publication date of this statement, is that a broker-dealer operating under the circumstances set forth in Section IV …

XRP price fell 41% on Binance over the past three days as news of the lawsuit by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission against Ripple became apparent. As a result, several small exchanges have already halted XRP trading. So far, three small exchanges, namely OSL, Beaxy and CrossTower have either temporarily stopped trading or removed XRP. More exchanges may delist XRP According to prominent lawyers in the cryptocurrency industry, exchanges that listed XRP are at risk if the token is deemed a security. Hailey Lennon, a partner at Anderson Kill, said: “You know who is at risk if XRP …