One of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization value, XRP, remains in the focus of attention of the whole crypto community for several years now.
This is not only because these traders or investors have bet on it but also since Ripple (the company that owns half of the XRP supply), as they believe, is currently fighting against the overarching approach of US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in court. The outcome of this long-running court battle will determine the further fate of the crypto regulation landscape in the United States.
How XRP and Ripple to exist
Ripple was founded in 2012 by Jed McCaleb and Chris Larsen under an initial name OpenCoin. A year later, OpenCoin was renamed as Ripple Labs. Meanwhile, in 2011 McCaleb, David Schwartz and Arthur Britto created the XRP Ledger (XRPL) with XRP as a native token. It was issued in the amount of 100 million.
Then McCaleb took part in the creation of both OpenCoin and XRP Ledger, XRPL and 80 million XRP to Ripple. The company insists that XRP is not its native coin unlike the cases of other blockchains in the market, such Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), etc. Unlike several crypto exchanges which existed back then – Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin – Ripple chose to focus on cooperating with banks and remittance to use XRP for fast and cheap cross-border transactions.
Jed McCaleb was Ripple’s very first chief technology officer (CTO), however, in 2013, his plans for the company development did not match those of Chris Larsen and the former chose to call it quits.
Upon quitting, he received nine billion XRP as part of the contract with a condition that he will refrain from selling all these billions at once in order to prevent an XRP price crash which would happen in that case. McCaleb then began to sell his XRP gradually, in small portions every year, then every month. Finally he sold the remnants of his XRP stash in September 2022.
Upon quitting Ripple, McCaleb founded his own blockchain Stellar with a native token XLM to focus on similar targets as Ripple. However, while Larsen’s company chose to focus on seamless and cheap transactions for banks, Stellar wanted to create a system for affordable money transfers for individuals with a particular focus on developing countries. The CTO position at Ripple is currently held by David Schwartz, one of the XRPL creators.
Meanwhile, XRP quickly became a popular cryptocurrency on the market and it quickly became the third largest coin by market capitalization size, coming after Bitcoin and Ethereum. XRP held on that honorable spot until December 2020, when the SEC started their lawsuit which continues to run now.
SEC sues Ripple but lets Ethereum alone
At the end of 2020, the SEC chairman back then was Jay Clayton. It was he who initiated a lawsuit against Ripple, claiming XRP to be an unregistered security and accusing Ripple of selling billions of these “illegal” assets to institutional and retail investors. The legal case was also turned against the company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse and its co-founder and executive chairman Christ Larsen.
They were accused of personally making more than $1 billion on selling unregistered securities (XRP) to financial institutions.
The sides exchanged numerous strikes in court until the summer of 2023 when the judge ruled that XRP sales on the secondary market did not qualify as securities. A few months later, the SEC dropped its charges against Garlinghouse and Larsen to better focus on its attempts to prove that XRP sales to financial institutions can be called security selling.
The recent case of the SEC dropping its investigation against Ethereum 2.0 confirmed the regulator’s initial verdict that ETH sales on various markets do not qualify as security sales. This victory, although celebrated by many in the crypto space, has raised questions from Ripple and the army of XRP holders.
XRP price prediction
XRP reached an all-time high of $3.84 six years ago – on January 4, 2018. By now, the coin’s price has declined by more than 87%. It got a massive push down when the SEC-Ripple suit began and many large exchanges began to suspend XRP trading or even delist this cryptocurrency. Among them were Coinbase, Binance US, and Bitstamp.
In July 2023, when Ripple saw its major win against the SEC, the XRP price shot up to $0.8 but soon after that it went down to $0.47 again.
Many XRP holders expect the lawsuit to be over this year and they are certain that when Ripple wins, XRP will go to the moon or at least it will surpass $1. In a recent interview, CEO Garlinghouse named September 21 this year as a possible date when this long-running suit will be over and done with.
If this happens indeed, then by the end of 2024, analysts expect XRP to reach $0.7 and by the end of 2025, their predictions name $1.18 as the maximum price level the coin will be able to reach.
Considering the fact that Ripple now intends to create its own stablecoin backed by US dollar, these predictions have higher chances of coming true.
