Ripple CEO comments on meme coins amidst XRP ETF optimism
- XRP ranges close to $0.50 on Monday, amidst uncertainty of an update in the SEC vs. Ripple lawsuit.
- Ripple filing supporting its motion to seal relevant documents awaits a response from the SEC.
- Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse commented on meme coins at Consensus.
Ripple (XRP) is embroiled in a legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for nearly four years. The SEC vs. Ripple lawsuit drags on as holders await the SEC’s response to the payment firm’s filing from May 29.
XRP is ranging around $0.50, a key price level for the altcoin, amidst CEO Brad Garlinghouse’s recent statement on meme coins in Consensus 2024.
Daily Digest Market Movers: Ripple CEO comments on meme coins, holders await lawsuit update
- Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse shared his thoughts on meme coins at Consensus 2024, a leading crypto event.
- Garlinghouse said,
I get a ton of shit when I say these things but I’m going to say it anyway, I don’t think Dogecoin has been a good thing for the industry.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse
— XRP (@BankXRP) May 31, 2024
I get a ton of shit when i say these things but I’m going to say it anyway, I don’t think Dogecoin has been a good thing for the industry.
It’s about solving real Problems . pic.twitter.com/XMeEWaJz8O
- The Ripple executive questioned the meme coin’s utility and slammed it for lack of a real use case.
- Garlinghouse established that he is not “anti-Dogecoin” but took aim at the largest meme coin during his talk.
- SEC vs. Ripple lawsuit continues with the payment firm’s filing of a motion to seal relevant documents. These documents are connected with the regulator’s motion for judgment and remedies.
- The deadline for filing Omnibus letter motions for all involved parties was May 20.
- Ripple’s recent filing is a letter supporting its Omnibus motion.
- The payment remittance firm explains that the SEC should not be able to force disclosure of the payment remittance firm’s highly sensitive financial information in its May 29 filing.
#XRPCommunity #SECGov v. #Ripple #XRP @Ripple has filed a reply letter in further support of its Motion to Seal documents in connection with the @SECGov’s Motion for Judgment and Remedies. pic.twitter.com/NeuFZII1m8
— James K. Filan (@FilanLaw) May 29, 2024
- Holders await the SEC’s reply to the filing, as on June 10.
Technical analysis: XRP hovers around $0.50 in a bearish formation
Ripple is hovering around the key level of $0.50 on Monday. At the time of writing, XRP price is $0.4988 on Binance. Ripple has formed a descending triangle, a formation with bearish tendencies, between March 25 and June 10, as seen in the XRP/USDT 1-day chart.
The bearish chart pattern is characterized by a descending upper trendline and a second, flatter horizontal trendline. XRP price touched the upper trendline on several occasions between May 25 and June 6 and the lower trendline at $0.4917 has acted as support between March 25 and June 10.
The bearish signs extend to the momentum indicators on the 1-day chart. The red histogram bars below the neutral line on the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) indicator support the bearish thesis.
Relative Strength Index (RSI) is 39.53, dipping towards the oversold level at 30.
The downside target for XRP is a nearly 10% decline to the June 7 low of $0.4508. XRP could find support at the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.4717. The Fibonacci level marks the drawdown from Ripple’s April 9 peak of $0.6431 to the April 13 low of $0.4188.
XRP/USDT 1-day chart
A daily candlestick close above the upper trendline of the descending triangle formation could invalidate the bearish thesis for Ripple. XRP could target the 50% Fibonacci retracement at $0.5310 as its resistance.
SEC vs Ripple lawsuit FAQs
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 aren’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 Ripple’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.
Author
Ekta Mourya
FXStreet
Ekta Mourya has extensive experience in fundamental and on-chain analysis, particularly focused on impact of macroeconomics and central bank policies on cryptocurrencies.
