The digital assets industry is no stranger to controversies and sometimes the sensational cases make up a majority of the headlines. One such scandal has come to the forefront again, this time involving Ripple.
The Brad Garlinghouse led organization had been accused of running an illegal ICO earlier and now Ripple has taken the stance to go on the offense.
Ripple had first filed the notice for motion on January 15, which tells the other side about the company’s earlier motion to dismiss the lawsuit. The feud got so public that even Ripple Chief Technology Officer [CTO] David Schwartz gave his two cents on the issue. The popular computer scientist claimed that Ripple’s high profile lawyers will take care of the lawsuit with “their strong words”.
Ripple has chosen Kathleen R. Hartnett and Damien J. Marshall to head their case. Both the lawyers work at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, the law firm founded by David Boies. David Boies has been involved in several high profile cases before and last made the limelight when he represented the US government in an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft.
Although both Ripple and its officials remain confident about tackling the lawsuit, the fact remains that the case may be tied up in paperwork for months to come. The lawsuit was first filed by Bradley Sostack on August 5 of last year. Sostack claimed that he had lost a lot of his savings because of Ripple’s founders.
In his original statement, he had said that had lost almost $118,100 worth of XRP assets. The reason why the lawsuit has been stuck in such a rut is because of the lack of clarity surrounding XRP: is it a security or a commodity. Heath Tarbert, the Chairman at the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] had said during an interview:
“Part of the issue is that our jurisdiction we share with the SEC. If it’s a security, it falls under their jurisdiction. If it’s a commodity, it falls under ours. So we’ve been working closely with the SEC over the last year or so to think about which falls in what box.”
One of the major concerns if Ripple fails is the avalanche effect it will have on XRP. The cryptocurrency has already been struggling to climb up on the price charts and news of this magnitude is sure to shake up the value even more. The value of XRP depends on its volume and market sentiment and at the moment neither are too stable.
At press time, XRP was trading for $0.26 with a total market cap of $10.33 billion. XRP’s 24-hour market volume was $1.667 billion after a 2.54 percent increase on the daily chart.