Ripple Legal Win Triggers New Bullish Swing
A big week for crypto means even more questions to answer now
They say the best defense is a good offense — and it didn’t take long for the wider crypto world to capitalize on even a split-decision legal win for Ripple in one of the industry’s most important cases against the SEC.
Here’s the “Week That Was” recap from the most trusted eyes in crypto. You can listen to Coinage host Zack Guzman and Givner Law founder Ariel Givner discuss the finer points on our Space here.
ICYMI: The judge presiding over the Ripple’s case vs. the SEC ruled on Thursday that sales of Ripple’s XRP token on exchanges did not constitute investment contracts. The tl;dr was that XRP could be sold on exchanges without violating securities laws, and exchanges were quick to put that ruling into action.
Less than 24 hours later, XRP was re-listed for trading on Coinbase, Kraken, and other exchanges. At one point, XRP’s price rocketed 80% higher as other altcoins pumped along with it.
The verdict wasn’t all good news for Ripple, though. While selling XRP on exchanges didn’t violate securities law, Judge Torres did rule that the company violated securities law by selling unregistered securities in the form of tokens direct to investors. (Ripple had sold $728.9 million of XRP tokens to hedge funds and other sophisticated buyers.) That didn’t prevent Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse from taking a victory lap on Bloomberg to call the SEC a “bully.”
Overall, it’s a hugely bullish win for crypto as a whole and now puts the SEC back on the defensive as the industry rallies around the fact that if selling XRP isn’t a violation of securities law, it’s tough to say selling nearly anything else is. Suddenly being extremely unclear about the rules seems to be turning against the SEC.
In Fraud and Failures…
The founder of now-bankrupt crypto platform Celsius, Alex Mashinsky, was arrested on fraud charges Thursday. His company also agreed to a near-record $4.7 billion settlement with the FTC and was sued by the SEC, the CFTC, and the FTC.
At least one bankruptcy attorney Coinage spoke with noted that the reason for the delay in charging Mashinsky was likely due to the fact they wanted be extra careful they got exactly everything right, since technically, Celsius’ terms of service had mentioned the risks to customers quite clearly. Coinage Host Zack Guzman recently resurfaced an interview with Mashinsky in 2021 where he tried to dance around being called out about that.
On Coinage:
Given all the discussions around failed crypto platforms taking customers funds down with them in bankruptcy (Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi, etc.) we hosted two industry titans on the best path forward to fix that.
In fact, Custodia Bank founder Caitlin Long and BitGo CEO Mike Belshe had already started that debate on Twitter with a (very) public back-and-forth. The two settled their beef during our debate Thursday. You can watch the debate on YouTube below and decide the winner here.
Win 0.25 ETH in 2 Minutes! …
This week, Coinage also launched our first on-chain game. All of our NFT holders are invited to play a trivia game and compete in answering questions to top the leaderboard. The top ranking wallets will win prizes (including a top prize of 0.25 ETH when the game closes Monday at 5PM ET.) Tell your friends, and may the smartest Coinage community member win! We’ll repeat the game weekly to close out July. Don’t have a Coinage NFT? You can still mint one now!
In Other Headlines…
Ripple CEO calls SEC a 'bully' following partial win in XRP ruling
Crypto Trading Volumes Spiked as the Market Celebrated a Court Setback for the SEC
Ethereum-backed stablecoin developer Ethena raises $6M
Aave’s Dollar-Pegged GHO Stablecoin Hits $2.5M Market Cap After Just 2 Days
Crypto Wallet Provider Gnosis Launches Self-Custodial Visa Debit Card
Aave Companies Launch V2 Lens, Introducing 'Blocking' to Crypto Social App
Unstoppable Domains Adds Support for ENS Domains
Cathie Wood's ARK Sells Another $50.5M Coinbase Shares
The next job for EU regulators: making sure Binance and other crypto giants don’t game MiCA
China wants 1.4bn citizens to use digital yuan for shopping and bus fares, but consumers still love Alipay
Coinbase to Pause Staking in California, New Jersey, South Carolina and Wisconsin
Crypto’s New Favorite Bank Is Reluctant to Accept the Title
Chainlink rolls out cross-chain interoperability protocol on multiple networks
That’s everything we’re taking a look at this week!
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