Things are not looking great for Ripple and its XRP cryptocurrency. In a day where the total market cap managed to add a whopping $60 billion as bitcoin charts a staggering 11% increase, XRP is down 5% in the past 24 hours.
In what looks like an interesting development, a group of supporters is trying to force the hand of White House on the allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
An interesting petition titled We the People ask the federal government to deem XRP, the virtual currency, a currency, has surfaced online, collecting signatures from Ripple supporters.
Describing the case, the petition argues that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has “filed a frivolous action claiming the cryptocurrency, XRP, which has already been deemed a currency by FinCEN, to be a security.”
The document goes further to explain that:
“Due to this action, the 40 billion dollar market for the currency is rapidly failing as companies scramble to maintain complianc. Billions of dollars of value is being wiped from the market in rapid succession and most critically, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans – the very Americans that the SEC is tasked to protect – are suffering irreparable harm and damages.”
The petition has been created by someone using the initials J.W. on December 29, 2020. It needs 100,000 signees to get a response from the White House, and so far, over 11,500 people have signed it.
The ultimate ask is for the White House to “cease immediately” the SEC complaint as it is “damaging to the holders of the currency XRP.”
The overall tone of the petition sounds much like the official position of Ripple. As CryptoPotato reported, the company stated that the “unproven allegations against Ripple” have already harmed “countless innocent retail holders with no connection” to the company.
XRP has lost a major chunk of its value, somewhere in the magnitude of around 70%, since the SEC pressed formal charges in late December.
There’s a pretrial conference that’s set to take place on February 22nd, 2021, between the Commission and Ripple. However, it appears that the damage has already been done for many investors because the price has plummetted so much.
As a direct consequence, many major exchanges took almost immediate actions and delisted (or announced plans to delist) the cryptocurrency from their platforms. Some of the more notable names include Coinbase – the leading US-based cryptocurrency exchange, Binance US, as well as Bitstamp.