Binance.US and eToro are the latest platforms to suspend XRP trading in the U.S.. U.S. customers will not be able to trade XRP on eToro on January 3. Customers with existing trades at the time will have three weeks from that date to close all open positions. For Binance.US, the effective date of its XRP delisting is January 13. They join Coinbase and many other exchanges to halt XRP trading for American traders, plus Coinbase is the subject of a lawsuit from a disgruntled trader accusing the platform of knowingly selling XRP as an unlicensed security to its users.
The price of XRP crashed following a huge airdrop that will credit all XRP holders who hold funds in participating exchanges and wallets with free Spark (FLR) tokens. On the morning of December 12, immediately after the airdrop all of the top ten coins by market capitalization were up 2-4% but XRP was down about 10%. The FLR, to be distributed by Flare Network on a yet-unreleased blockchain, is a smart contract utility fork of XRP. The pair will attempt to challenge Ethereum's dominance in decentralized finance (defi) and decentralized applications (dapps). Flare integrates with Ethereum's Virtual Machine, allowing existing Ethereum dapps to be ported over to Flare to serve the XRP ecosystem.
On March 11, 2025, the U.S, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) postponed decisions on multiple crypto-asset exchange-traded fund (ETF) filings until May 2025. However, this is widely viewed as standard procedure that all of the currently approved crypto-asset ETFs have gone through before. Of note, as of of March 12, nine companies have filed with the SEC for XRP ETF products. Beyond dedicated XRP ETF filings, at least two asset managers have included XRP in broader crypto ETF products. See also: https://cointelegraph.com/news/xrp-etf-filings-awaiting-sec-approval
On Jan. 1, 2021, a petition was filed in Rhode Island seeking to halt the SEC's claims as to XRP owned by a group of purchases. John Deaton, an attorney with class action experience, claims in the petition that he and others like him did not buy XRP as an investment or consider it to be a security. Paragraph 45 of the complaint suggests that XRP is a currency, virtual currency or commodity, or utility token, and, therefore, not a security. In support of this conclusion, Deaton argues that XRP has a number of uses that essentially preclude it from being classified as a security.
The plaintiff's primary argument in this case has been that Ripple Labs advertises the XRP token as a utilitarian tool to further greater business interests. They assert that the company instead uses the sale of XRP as its primary source of revenue, having no real interest in using the token for any other purpose. They have presented as evidence the fact that XRP is not needed for Ripple's key services, such as xVia and xRapid (now RippleNet). Ripple Labs denies this claim, and insists that it has always been transparent about its use of XRP.
While Ripple was forced to liquidate many of its XRP holdings to stay cash flow positive, online XRP Twitter engagement fell by 16% Q1 2020 and the number of users in the "XRP Army"has declined 82% since January 2018.
In its Flipside Crypto "4 Things To Know About XRP Money Flows", Flipside Crypto analyzes the flows of XRP through the ecosystem and notes that activity for XRP drops significantly on the weekend. It theorizes that this is likely due to a lack of consumer or retail interest in the asset.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) intends to sue Ripple over its sale of XRP, with Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen and CEO Garlinghouse also named as defendants alongside the firm. The lawsuit revolves around whether XRP, a digital asset that the company launched in 2012, is actually a security that should have been registered with the SEC. In recent years, the SEC has ruled that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not securities, partly on the grounds they are decentralized with no person or company in control of them. By contrast, 100 billion units of XRP were issued in 2012 for Ripple Labs which has been selling them into the market in scheduled allotments.
Coinbase will suspend the XRP trading pairs on its platform. Trading will move into limit only starting December 28, 2020 at 2:30 PM PST, and will be fully suspended on Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. The trading suspension will not affect customers' access to XRP wallets which will remain available for deposit and withdraw functionality after the trading suspension. Further, customers will remain eligible for the previously announced Spark airdrop (subject to approval in certain jurisdictions), and it will continue to support XRP on Coinbase Custody and Coinbase Wallet.
Ripple Labs has often claimed that XRP has nothing to do with Ripple Labs the company, that XRP pre-existed Ripple Labs the company and was gifted to it, and that the protocol that runs XRP is totally decentralized, à la Bitcoin. However, this blog comprehensively shows that this is untrue.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed an amended complaint towards Ripple, accusing the firm of purposely misleading investors in relation to its XRP crypto-asset. The original complaint accuses Ripple Labs and its lead executives of being in violation of securities laws with $1.3 billion generated from XRP sales. It now alleges that they purposely manipulated XRP's price by increasing and decreasing XRP sales depending on market conditions.
Ripple Labs has filed a Form C in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, requesting a de novo review of a recent ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, which imposed a $125 million fine on Ripple for institutional XRP sales, ruling that they constituted securities transactions. (U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres said that XRP in itself was not a security when issued to retail investors or when sold programmatically on digital asset exchanges.) A de novo review allows the appeals court to re-examine the legal interpretations made by the district court without deferring to its previous conclusions. Ripple's filing comes after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also filed Form C in a bid to reverse Judge Analisa Torres' summary judgment. The SEC's appeal, however, did not contest the ruling that XRP isn't a security for programmatic sales on digital asset exchanges. Instead, it sought a review of the court's application of securities law in institutional sales. https://x.com/s_alderoty/status/1849618428560064679
XRP's price had gradually surged from $0.27 on January 25 to $0.40 on the 30th, the momentum contributing to a narrative that it was going to boom, despite the fact that a legal fight between Ripple and the SEC is in a very nascent phase. A couple of hours before 8:30am ET on February 1, with confidence reaching fever pitch, XRP hit $0.7448. At that point, whales began to offload their XRP and the coin's value dropped over the course of the morning to as low as $0.38. On the stock markets, pump and dumps like this are a form of securities fraud-but no such regulations exist in the crypto space.
Ripple will add smart contracts to the XRP Ledger (XRPL) developer ecosystem and XRPL mainnet, although it's still in its research phase and the firm did not provide a definite time frame for deployment. It also invited programmers familiar with Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) languages to explore possibilities on its sidechain. Ripple also said the sidechain was created for developers using Ethereum-based smart contracts. This gives a familiar environment for deploying DApps, allowing them to use Solidity, a programming language used to build smart contracts on Ethereum. https://ripple.com/insights/expanding-programmability-on-the-xrp-ledger/
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed deciding on whether to approve two proposed crypto-asset exchange-traded funds (ETFs) holding Dogecoin and XRP until June 2025. The postponements were responses to March requests from U.S. exchanges NYSE Arca and Cboe BZX Exchange to list Bitwise's Dogecoin (DOGE) and Franklin Templeton's XRP ETFs, respectively. https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nysearca/2025/34-102942.pdfhttps://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/cboebzx/2025/34-102944.pdf
On February 13, 2025 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) acknowledged filings from crypto-asset manager Grayscale to list spot XRP and Dogecoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The SEC has 240 days following the submission of the filings to the federal register to decide whether they get the green light, which would put the deadline in mid-October 2025. In prior weeks, the SEC had also acknowledged applications for Litecoin and Solana ETFs. The decision on an XRP ETF may be complicated by the SEC's lawsuit against Ripple Labs regarding XRP's security status. Dogecoin's path to approval could be more straightforward as it adopts many facets of Bitcoin, for which the SEC has approved ETF products. https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nysearca/2025/34-102420.pdfhttps://www.sec.gov/files/rules/sro/nysearca/2025/34-102416.pdf
Ripple's XRP is having a disastrous start to 2019. In a year when bitcoin is storming back towards bull territory, XRP has crashed 16 percent. The third-largest cryptocurrency is now the worst-performing digital asset in the top ten.
According to "Why Is XRP Underperforming?" report by cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, "as a payment solution provider, Ripple is facing intense competition," and "any negative impact on the company could easily transform into undesirable price actions in XRP."