Institutions – Page 12

Stimulus Flooding

With the recent stimulus packages, the United States has added around $2.4 trillion to the economy. This has many worrying about the inevitable decrease in the dollar’s purchasing power and the rise in inflation.

Graph showing Billions of Dollars in circulation – Source FRED

To hedge against this rising inflation, many have retreated from the dollar and have taken shelter in assets that historically have held value or have even appreciated in value. Typically, assets that people convert their dollars into to avoid inflation or volatile markets are ones that are scarce or are less volatile in general. These ‘safe-haven’ assets include things like precious metals, stocks in sectors that are generally less volatile, and more recently, Bitcoin.

Public Companies Bitcoin Holdings

The table above shows the Publicly Traded Companies Holding Bitcoin, the percentage of their business in BTC and how much they have made in profit since buying. The current total of all these companies is 812,054 BTC ($12 Billion USD) as at 10 November 2020.

Exciting times, looking forward to seeing how this institutional space evolves over the next year or so. Be sure to subscribe to Crypto News to get the news first.

Following the massive backlash that Ripple faces due to the SEC’s lawsuit, two major exchanges —Binance and eToro— are suspending XRP trading from their platform.

As expected, it was only a matter of time until major exchanges started delisting XRP when Coinbase and Grayscale —both members of the Crypto Rating Council— decided to turn away from Ripple.

eToro stated that the platform is suspending XRP trading and deposits on the U.S. The broker settled a deadline of January 24 for users to close all XRP positions. Despite this, earlier suspensions could apply before January 3 if the panorama for Ripple worsens.

For now, the above prohibitions affect only US customers and will not affect any customer’s ability to hold XRP in the eToro Wallet. All customers, including US customers, may continue to hold XRP in their eToro Wallet, and those customers still holding XRP on the eToro platform after January 24th can transfer their XRP to an eToro Wallet at any time.

Likewise, Binance announced that trading and deposits using XRP are suspended, but withdrawals are allowed until January 13.

A Risky Scenario For Exchanges

The SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple can take several years of legal dispute. The decisions to remove XRP are not only driven by the massive price drop. Exchanges could be in danger of being sued by regulatory bodies alike if the SEC wins and Ripple Labs did sell XRP as a digital asset.

Similarly, a Coinbase user is filing a lawsuit against the exchange for selling XRP as a digital asset instead of a security.

Thomas Sandoval, who resides in St. Louis, is the plaintiff in this case. Sandoval states that Coinbase knew that XRP was a security, unregistered by regulatory bodies, but decided to sell it as a digital asset anyway.

It’s not yet clear how the legal procedure will develop. Sandoval added that Coinbase “scammed” its user base by having “prior information” about XRP being an unlicensed security.

The pretrial for Ripple has been set as well, on February 22 of 2021. The pretrial will be held virtually with a teleconference. Both parties need to submit a joint letter a week later defending their position.