Recently, Ripple, a San Francisco-based cross-border payments crypto company, declared victory in its legal battle against the U.S. SEC. After nearly four years of legal strife between the regulator and Ripple, the case was closed and the SEC dropped its appeal, with Ripple being fined $125 million and XRP being recognized as a nonsecurity.
Ripple's cross-appeal is still pending, however, and the cryptocurrency market is sure to hear more about this legal battle. But for the most part, it is over.
For some advocates of cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin in particular, the legal fact that XRP is not a security is nothing, and for example Max Keiser, one of the earliest Bitcoin evangelists, the altcoin is a pre-mined security, as he called it in a recent post.
The trigger was the news that the SEC confirmed that BTC and other cryptocurrencies that work on the proof-of-work consensus are not securities. "And pre-mined ETH & XRP are 100% securities," Keiser commented on the statement.
XRP, decentralization and Ripple
It is worth saying that the Bitcoin maxi is not alone in his views, as the fact that Ripple still has over 37 billion XRP in escrow is a strong argument for calling the alternative cryptocurrency not only a pre-mined asset, but a security.
Thirty-seven billion XRP is a lot. It is literally equivalent to $88.39 billion. For example, the market capitalization of the coin in circulation is $138.41 billion.
So, yes, more than a third of all XRP is controlled by Ripple, and despite the company's plans to gradually release that volume onto the market, that fact alone is enough to cast a shadow over the decentralized nature of XRP - at least for Keiser.
U.Today Editorial Team
Dan Burgin
