As you all know by now, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit against Ripple (XRP), CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Christian Larsen.
The Commission claims that XRP is classifiable as a "security" and accuses Ripple and the two executives of having raised over $ 1.3 billion through an "unregistered and ongoing offering of digital securities", initiated in 2013. further claims that Ripple distributed XRP "for business and market-making services", and that both Garlinghouse and Larsen never reported their personal sales of XRP, estimated at $ 600 million (the fact that they were selling XRP by dropping the price and then buy back ... it is equally well known).
Under the regulations imposed by the SEC, individuals and companies operating in the cryptocurrency industry must register their token offerings with the Commission, but only in the event that such digital currencies are considered equity securities. Which tokens are security or not remains a mystery, however, because there are no clear rules.
The SEC also accused Garlinghouse and Larsen of not registering XRP despite representing an investment in Ripple, in order to further enrich themselves.
As soon as news of an impending SEC lawsuit broke, XRP's price plummeted. At the time of the leak, its value plummeted to $ 0.355, down by more than 22%.
XRP continued to collapse until it reached the current $ 0.21 (in December it lost almost 70% of its value and about 80% from BTC).
The reasons for the collapse also lie in the delisting from all exchanges. I remember this situation was created by the strict US rules.
I specify that the ONLY one for the moment incorporated and that perhaps will be classified as "security" is XRP. However, it cannot be excluded that XRP can then be reintegrated into exchanges.
But what are the other cryptocurrencies under investigation? A board called "Crypto Rating Council" (made up of Coinbase, Genesis, Greyscale, Circle, Kraken, etc) has created a judgment framework, with a score ranging from 1 to 5, to tell if a crypto can be classified as "security" or not.
This ranking is INDEPENDENT (has nothing to do with SEC investigations):
5= very high risk
4, 4.25, 4.50, 4.75 (growing risk)= high risk
3, 3.50, 3.75= medium risk
2= low risk
1= very low risk
??5=
??4.75=
??4.50=
??4.25=
??4= Ripple
??3.75= Augur, Cosmos, Decentraland, Stellar, Tezos, EOS, FOAM, Hedera Hashgraph, Livepeer, Loom Network
??3.50= Maker, Polymath
?2= Ethereum, Chainlink, Algorand, BAT, Numeraire, Ethereum Classic, IOTA, Zcash
?1= Bitcoin, Dai, USDC, Monero, Dash, Horizen, Litecoin
Some of these cryptocurrencies have decreased in value following the announcement of XRP (on all Chainlink, EOS, Tezos). Be careful because there is a lot of FUD around (especially on Chainlink).
The complete study (2019) can be found here: CryptoRatingCouncil (Asset Ratings)
