XRP surges to 3 years high despite Ripple Labs lawsuit

The price of XRP, the cryptocurrency used in Ripple Labs’ payments network, on Wednesday morning hit $1.09 for the first time in three years when it set an all-time high of $2.7700.

The new price at $1.09 means the cryptocurrency rose to 50 percent over the last 24 hours. XRP is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalisation at $48.7 billion. Ripple is traded on 252 exchanges, with the top exchanges being Binance ($13.24 billion), OKEx ($2.50 billion), and Bybit ($2.42 billion).

Since Tuesday, Ripple has had 23 percent transparent volume and has been trading on 1,443 active markets with its highest volume trading pairs being USDT ($29.55 billion), USD ($6.40 billion), and BTC ($5.76 billion).

To be sure, XRP is an independent digital currency that is neither owned nor controlled by any one entity or person. It is an open-source cryptocurrency and can be used by anyone, including Ripple. The ledger is community-based, which means only users can decide whether it succeeds or fails. Ripple created 100 billion XRP coins at its inception.

XRP’s rise comes on the back of the ongoing lawsuit against Ripple Labs over allegations that the company and two of its executives raised over $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering. The lawsuit was filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2020.

The SEC alleged that Christian Larsen, co-founder, executive chairman of Ripple, and Bradley Garlinghouse, the current CEO of Ripple, raised funds from 2013, through XRP which is unregistered security offering to investors in the US and worldwide. SEC also accused Ripple of distributing billions of XRP in exchange for non-cash consideration, such as labor and market-making services.

According to the complaint, in addition to structuring and promoting the XRP sales to finance the company’s business, Larsen and Garlinghouse also effected personal unregistered sales of XRP totaling approximately $600 million. Essentially, the defendants allegedly failed to register their offers and sales of XRP or satisfy an exemption from registration, in violation of the registration provisions of the federal securities laws.

In the first week of the lawsuit, a number of exchanges that listed XRP announced they were dropping the cryptocurrency pending a clearer direction from the proceedings. The delisting may have also brought more attention to the cryptocurrency as many investors have keenly followed the court proceedings.

Experts say traders are beginning to treat the lawsuit as market indicators. For example, the price of XRP rose over 15 percent as soon as the SEC agreed to remove market manipulation claims against Ripple Labs in February 2021.

XRP may also be benefitting from the bullish season already began by bitcoin and Ethereum which have set new all-time highs and has led other altcoins like Litecoin and Bitcoin cash to new milestones.