In the mammoth battle between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, common investors and XRP holders are becoming the hostages in the middle.
The SEC’s case has been ramping up for a while now, where the U.S. agency is trying to prove that Ripple leaders have been engaged in selling unregistered securities to the public, with all that those allegations entail.
One of the latest wrinkles in this case is reported by Samuel Wan at NewsBTC.
Apparently, the SEC lawyers don’t think that the rank-and-file of XRP holders should be involved.
“In a letter to Judge Analisa Torres, the SEC’s Senior Trial Attorney Jorge Tenreiro argued that XRP holders had not clarified their actions,” Wan writes. “What’s more, Tenreiro states consolidation/coordination of claims is statute-barred without the SEC’s say-so.”
But many of those who do hold the asset beg to differ.
“Ten thousand XRP holders came forward to say they have been harmed, not protected, by the SEC’s actions,” Wan explains. “This plays into Ripple’s strategy of demolishing the SEC’s case on the grounds they failed to consider the secondary market.”
This back-and-forth follows such other notable controversial points of the same case, such as the question of whether XRP has some special utility differentiating it from Bitcoin and Ethereum, and what it means to give out XRP as payment for various tasks associated with managing the platform.
This news comes as some exchanges that have delisted XRP, like Coinbase, are thinking about coming back to the table and re-adding the asset to trading platforms.
“Coinbase and all other Exchanges in the USA should be ashamed of themselves for halting trading of XRP,” wrote NickT300 on Reddit a month ago. “They had no reason to halt trading, causing so many headaches for everyone in the USA.”
Will XRP be fully restored? We’ll see.