Litecoin (LTC) exceeded Ripple’s XRP as it hit an $8.45 billion market capitalization, past XRP’s $8.2 billion. However, at press time, Litecoin has lost about 7.37% of its market valuation and is just over $8 billion. On the other hand, XRP is at an $8.2 billion market cap.
The price of XRP has been falling amid a lawsuit that involves its CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Christian Larsen. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit, the CEO generated over $1.3 billion by selling “unregistered securities.”
XRP has shed 64% since the SEC lawsuit went public about a week ago. As of the 22nd of December, XRP’s market capitalization was about $23. Before the suit, the price of XRP had gained about 140% since the beginning of the year.
Bitcoin’s price is currently down 7.07% to $122.51, while XRP has lost over 23% and is trading at 0.221723.
In addition, Bitstamp, among other exchanges, has announced that it will terminate XRP trading because of the lawsuit. The exchange said that its US customers will no longer have the option to trade and deposit XRP from the 8th of January.
As it stands, XRP will be subject to new regulations from the SEC, which may affect Ripple. Notably, Ripple holds about 55 billion XRP of the 100 billion tokens in existence.
