Exchanges to delist XRP in light of SEC's enforcement action against Ripple

The cryptocurrency exchange OSL suspended all XRP trading and payment services citing the SEC's decision to sue Ripple for the illegal securities sale. The Hong Kong-based licensed company announced that decision would become effective immediately and remain in force until further notice.

In light of the US Securities & Exchange Commission's enforcement action against Ripple Labs & 2 of its executives, we have suspended all XRP payment in and trading services on the OSL platform, effective immediately and until further notice. 

A Chicago-based Beaxy Exchange followed the lead and also halted XRP due to Ripple's litigation issues. The company confirmed that withdrawals are still available until further notice.

Meanwhile, another US-based platform, CrossTower chose to delist the coin altogether, Coindesk reports.

CrossTower's listing committee evaluates tokens along multiple dimensions. One of the criteria is whether an asset is security. Given the uncertainty regarding XRP's status, CrossTower has decided to delist XRP, CrossTower president Kristin Boggiano commented.

While Beaxy and OLS may be small and little known trading platform, other exchanges may soon follow the lead. According to a well-known cryptocurrency enthusiast Tone Vays, Ripple will soon be excluded from all large cryptocurrency trading platforms.

While Vays is a hardcore Bitcoin maximalist who believes that anything except Bitcoin is a scam, it stands to reason that exchanges might prefer to avoid XRP like the plague and escape unnecessary attention from the regulatory authorities. Moreover, if the SEC wins the lawsuit, they may be asked to register as securities exchanges or face penalties for allowing retail consumers to trade unregistered security.

This view is shared by Ryan Watkins, a research analyst at Messari.

Many cryptocurrency exchanges would be forced to delist it so that liquidity would dry up, he said.

Meanwhile, XRP has been losing ground rapidly. The token dropped from the top-3 after losing over 23% on a day-to-day basis. At the time of writing, XRP is trading at $0.36, with the upside momentum gaining traction. As FXStreet previously reported, a failure to return above $0.45 will increase the bearish momentum and push the price towards $0.3.