As coordinated price pumping campaigns keep spreading, the price of XRP has doubled in the past two days and then dived, following in the footsteps of two other recently pumped coins. (Updated at 12:00 PM UTC with a response from Ripple. Updated at 16:00 UTC with the latest price data. Updated at 16:26 UTC with a new comment by Stephen Palley.)
On Saturday, XRP was trading at USD 0.282 before the rally intensified and pushed the price to USD 0.734 on Monday morning. And then, it crashed by more than 40%. At the time of writing, it trades at USD 0.414 and is down by 8.5% in a day, trimming its weekly gains to 51%.
Also, XRP is back as the 4th (was the 3rd earlier today) largest cryptoasset by market capitalization, after it crashed due to a regulatory crackdown in the US.
XRP price chart:
@IamNomad And the cycle of new bag holders have been born.
— shaquille o’atmeal (@crypt0e)
The price was rallying as coordinated pumping campaigns on platforms such as Reddit and Telegram were working on repeating the dogecoin (DOGE) rally.
For example, at least two Telegram groups (t.me/pumpxrp and t.me/pumpxrpofficial) with over 279,000 subscribers in total are now solely focused on the XRP pump, while, on Reddit, r/SatoshiStreetBets (219,000 subscribers), were still trying to push DOGE alongside XRP.
Things are out of control.
— [email protected] (@Jason)
just setting up my twttr
— jack (@jack)
It looks like, history was a lesson again, and XRP repeated the path of recently pumped DOGE and tron (TRX). TRX got some attention in the r/wallstreetbets subreddit, with 7.7m users, responsible for the GameStop (GME) pump last month, after Tron’s Justin Sun pledged to spend USD 1m on GME shares.
Today, DOGE is down almost 50% since its all-time high reached on January 29. However, in the past 24 hours, it’s up by 41% again, trading at USD 0.039.
DOGE price chart:
Meanwhile, TRX dropped more than 20% since its sharp spike this past Friday, trading at USD 0.0323. The price is up by almost 3% in a day.
TRX price chart:
At the same time bitcoin (BTC), trades at USD 33,496 and is up by 2.6% in a day, while ethereum (ETH) increased by 1%, to USD 1,314.
Preliminary response
Meanwhile, this past Friday, XRP-affiliated Ripple announced its preliminary legal response to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s complaint.
According to a summary provided by Stuart Alderoty, General Counsel at Ripple, XRP is not an investment contract, because:
- “XRP is a virtual currency and thus, outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.”
- “Ripple has never entered a contract for an investment with any holders of XRP.”
- “Ripple never held an ICO, never offered future tokens to raise money and has no relationship with the vast majority of XRP holders.”
- “Holding XRP does not mean a person receives a portion of Ripple’s revenue or profits.”
- “Ripple’s XRP sales amounted to far less than 1% of the massive XRP market that has grown over the last 8 years.”
- “The XRP Ledger, on which XRP actually moves, is completely decentralized. The SEC ignores the economic reality of an XRP transaction.”
- “Ripple’s XRP holdings do not create an investment contract any more than DeBeers holdings convert diamonds into securities.”
Also, Alderoty claims that “the SEC is out of step domestically and globally” because “the Department of Justice and FinCEN determined in 2015 and 2020 that XRP is a virtual currency and have since regulated it as such” and “the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, and regulators in Singapore and Japan have concluded XRP is a virtual currency or a crypto asset, and not a security.” (Learn more: Fact-checking Ripple’s Claim that ‘Many G20 Gov’ts’ Call XRP a ‘Currency’)
The counsel also claims that “there is no principled distinction between XRP’s current function and that of BTC or ETH,” and that “the complaint filed by the SEC is full of cherry-picked quotes taken out of context, and draws conclusions that are unsupported by both the facts and the law.”
This is how some of the crypto lawyers reacted to the statements above:
75 years ago https://t.co/mGy9jCQhHr
— Preston Byrne (@prestonjbyrne)
“I know I was going 96 mph in a 55 but tit would have been legal in Germany”
— Palley (@stephendpalley)
case should settle after motion practice, maybe with an ability to allow trading to commence again in US. SEC prob… https://t.co/HMfoblX3NP
— Palley (@stephendpalley)
@lex_node #Ripple’s argument that it is unfair for #XRP to be deemed a security while ETH and BTC aren’t has been b… https://t.co/ijNvjxwcZq
— Eric Hess (@hess_legal)
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Learn more:
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GameStop: How Redditors Played Funds For Billions (And What Might Come Next)
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