Ripple (XRP) President Monica Long recently appeared on The Block Podcasts and addressed XRP trader concerns about the stablecoinÂ’s launch. The payment remittance firmÂ’s stablecoin is called Real USD (RLUSD) and is slated for launch in 2024.Â
Long shared her views on the stablecoin, its role in the ecosystem, the Real World Asset (RWA) narrative, and the institutional pivot on crypto.Â
Ripple has been in a state of decline since March 11. The altcoin is struggling to break past resistance at $0.50 and could extend losses by 5%, dipping to support at $0.4508, the June 7 low.Â
The red histogram bars on the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) momentum indicator supports this bearish narrative.Â
XRP/USDT daily chartÂ
If Ripple begins recovery, XRP could climb toward the nearest Fair Value Gap between $0.4825 and $0.4841. Further up, in its rally towards the psychological barrier at $0.50, Ripple faces resistance at $0.4955, the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the drop from the March 11 top of $0.7440 to the April 13 low of $0.4188.Â
It depends on the transaction, according to a court ruling released on July 14: For institutional investors or over-the-counter sales, XRP is a security. For retail investors who bought the token via programmatic sales on exchanges, on-demand liquidity services and other platforms, XRP is not a security.
The United States Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) accused Ripple and its executives of raising more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered asset offering of the XRP token. While the judge ruled that programmatic sales arenÂ’t considered securities, sales of XRP tokens to institutional investors are indeed investment contracts. In this last case, Ripple did breach the US securities law and will need to keep litigating over the around $729 million it received under written contracts.
The ruling offers a partial win for both Ripple and the SEC, depending on what one looks at. Ripple gets a big win over the fact that programmatic sales aren’t considered securities, and this could bode well for the broader crypto sector as most of the assets eyed by the SEC’s crackdown are handled by decentralized entities that sold their tokens mostly to retail investors via exchange platforms, experts say. Still, the ruling doesn’t help much to answer the key question of what makes a digital asset a security, so it isn’t clear yet if this lawsuit will set precedent for other open cases that affect dozens of digital assets. Topics such as which is the right degree of decentralization to avoid the “security” label or where to draw the line between institutional and programmatic sales are likely to persist.
The SEC has stepped up its enforcement actions toward the blockchain and digital assets industry, filing charges against platforms such as Coinbase or Binance for allegedly violating the US Securities law. The SEC claims that the majority of crypto assets are securities and thus subject to strict regulation. While defendants can use parts of RippleÂ’s ruling in their favor, the SEC can also find reasons in it to keep its current strategy of regulation by enforcement.
The court decision is a partial summary judgment. The ruling can be appealed once a final judgment is issued or if the judge allows it before then. The case is in a pretrial phase, in which both Ripple and the SEC still have the chance to settle.
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