Coinbase Faces Lawsuit Over Illegal Ripple XRP Sales

Leading US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is facing a lawsuit for the sales of XRP on its platform. This lawsuit comes on the back of the fallout on Ripple, the issuers of the XRP token.

Coinbase Allegedly Gained Unfair Advantage over rivals.

Coinbase has been accused in a class-action lawsuit of receiving commissions from illegal XRP sales. The plaintiff, Thomas Sandoval, claims that Coinbase knew that XRP was a security under US federal securities law.

The lawsuit further claims that Coinbase continued to offer the token to customers earning commissions from trades despite the knowledge. This, according to Sandoval, enabled the US exchange to gain an illegal advantage over other competitors that only sold commodities.

It is not known whether Coinbase has reacted to the lawsuit, but this makes things interesting for the exchange. Coinbase is preparing a landmark Initial Public Offering in 2021, and a major lawsuit could hinder its chances of getting approval from regulators.

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Coinbase has been fairly proactive in its response to the SEC legal case against Ripple. Earlier in the week, the US-based exchange announced the suspension of XRP trading on its platforms from January,

Ripple Continues to Struggle Amid Delistings

Since the announcement of the lawsuit by the SEC on December 22, the XRP price has gone downhill. In the last 30 days, the coin has lost over $21 billion in market cap as investors have liquidated their XRP holdings.

XRP continues to struggle in the past 24 hours as more exchanges are delisting the cryptocurrency. Bittrex and Genesis became the latest exchanges to suspend all trading activities on their platforms. This was after Crypto.com, OKCoin, and several other exchanges had announced their decision to delist the altcoin earlier in the week. At the moment, the future remains uncertain for the fourth largest cryptocurrency based on MarketCap.

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Ripple issued a statement recently in which it accused the SEC of setting a dangerous precedent with its decision. It further revealed that the lawsuit had caused more harm to XRP retail holders with no connection to Ripple. We expect that Ripple’s current back and forth will continue until the lawsuit is heard in 2021.