Troubled times for XRP continued as San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken becomes the latest to announce its plan to halt the trading of the crypto-asset for U.S. residents by the 29th of January 2021 at 5 pm PT. This comes after the US Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] brought its lawsuit against blockchain company Ripple last month, which alleged that the sales of XRP qualified as an unregistered securities offering.
Kraken is not the only prominent exchange to have made plans to suspend trading of the token whose value dropped by nearly 50% since the regulator filed the suit. Notably, well-known crypto platforms such as OKCoin, Coinbase, Bittrex, Genesis, Binance.US, and eToro has also suspended XRP trading in recent weeks.
What Does Kraken’s Move Mean For Customers?
The platform notified that it will be implementing the process any time of the said data and the US-based customers will have just two weeks to continue trading the crypto-asset. It also urged its customers to resolve their positions prior to the 29th of January. Despite this, the clients residing in the country will still be able to deposit, hold, and withdraw XRP with Kraken.
According to the official blog post released by the platform, those residing elsewhere will not be affected in any way.
Kraken further noted that the US residents with spot positions on margin must satisfy any outstanding margin obligations latest by the 28th of January or face liquidation. Its post read:
We intend to cancel open XRP orders and liquidate open XRP positions for U.S. resident We are monitoring the situation regarding the SEC’s filing and will adapt according to any new developments.
Should the position regarding holding, depositing, and withdrawal of XRP happen to change in the future, the exchange would make a public announcement accordingly.
XRP Collapses
XRP did not take the news well as it registered a fall of more than 16% over the past 24-hours driving the price to $0.279 at the time of writing. Soon after which DeFi token Polkadot [DOT] blasted past XRP to become the fourth largest cryptocurrency