Judgement on Ripple Case Delays but the Altcoin is Still Growing

The settlement of the legal dispute between Ripple and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) is delayed. Nevertheless, the altcoin is still on the rise.

The US SEC sued Ripple Labs Inc. and two executives (Christian Larsen and Bradley Garlinghouse) back in 2020 for allegedly selling around $1.3 billion of XRP (unregistered securities offering) as securities.

SEC sues Ripple

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed that Ripple began raising funds in 2013 by conducting sales of XRP in an unlicensed securities offering to other venture capitalists from the US and other parts of the world. The complaint also revealed that Ripple circulated large amounts of XRP in exchange for labor and market-making services and other non-cash considerations.

The two have been battling it out through legal means, but it seems that the case will take longer than expected.

According to Jeremy Hogan, the attorney and cryptocurrency law expert, Ripple is more likely to wait until November 12, 2021 before attempting to settle their legal dispute with the SEC.

The discovery phase of the litigation will not end until that time. However, this will make it difficult for the SEC and Ripple to negotiate a settlement if the two parties do not understand the extent, strength, and position of the other side's case. Ripple has no option but to wait until the set date to save some money.

The reason why the final decision of the case has been delayed is that the SEC needs a lot of time to gather facts and enough evidence to show that XRP is a security, and it is more likely that there will not be a settlement before the hearing of the motion is considered and settled.

XRP/USD price

The delay could mean a lot for the price of Ripple. Before Ripple was dragged to court, XRP was trading for around $0.633 (Dec 2020) and was ranked third after Ethereum and had a market of around $28,627,830,442. But since the opening of the case against it, XRP has seen a lot of turbulence in the market to the extent of trading a low of $0.1748. XRP is ranked 6th, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Nevertheless, the news of the delay has not pushed XRP into a downtrend. On the contrary, the altcoin is growing. At press time, XRP is trading at around $1.20, and its market cap is $53.141 billion. This means that the court cases against Ripple are not hurting the popularity of their coin.

However, XRP needs to perform a miracle if it is to recover and take its original position (third rank) - it needs to gain about $38B in terms of market cap to take the second rank, and this might happen only after the final verdict.