XRP trading and deposits for US customers are set to be discontinued, says the popular exchange, Bitstamp. This comes a few days after the announcement of the US Securities and Exchange Commission that they will be pursuing legal actions against Ripple and two of its executives, Garlinghouse and Larsen.
XRP haters are still having their field day in the sun as another well-known cryptocurrency exchange announced the halt of XRP trading. This started after Ripple revealed that they would be facing legal actions from the US Securities and Exchange Commission for illegal securities sales. Since then, the price of XRP kept diving.
Immediately after the lawsuit was announced, several exchanges have begun removing XRP from their list and halted trading for their US customers. OSL, CrossTower, and Beaxy have already stopped trading XRP on their platforms. The crypto hedge fund Bitwise has also removed XRP from its portfolio. All of them cited the lawsuit as the reason for their actions.
And, most recently, Bitstamp has also announced the end to XRP trading for US customers on their platform. As the largest exchange to do so, Bitstamp’s delisting of XRP is the biggest blow to Ripple’s prospects in recovering in the US so far. Bitstamp says that they will be keeping track of the situation and adapt to any developments.
On the company’s website, they announced that they would be stopping all trading and deposits for Ripple’s XRP on January 8, 2021, at 9 PM UTC. US customers will be allowed to withdraw thereafter. However, citizens from outside the United States will not be affected.
Ripple announced that they were expecting a lawsuit from the SEC a day before the regulatory entity’s official announcement. Their CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen were accused of carrying out an “on-going” illegal sale of securities by the authorities.
After Ripple announced the upcoming lawsuit, their price fell by 36% in the following day. Ripple has been going steady throughout the summer while many other cryptos were seeing huge gains. Then came the highly anticipated airdrop of the Flare Network’s tokens, Spark. XRP’s price then rose to a high $0.79. These tokens will help implement contracts on the XRP chain, and each eligible XRP holder was promised corresponding Spark tokens after the snapshot on December 11, 2020.
The lawsuit news then arrived, and their prices plummeted. Since then, XRP has been struggling to stay above the $0.30 mark. In contrast, Bitcoin has broken the $25,000 mark and is gaining the most attention. This may mean a more difficult time for XRP, currently the 3rd biggest cryptocurrency, to recover.
